Has director Pete Travis been fired from the Dredd project? Is Alex Garland seeking a co-director credit? This official statement aims to put the record straight…
At the end of last week, some worrying news emerged for those of us eagerly anticipating the second attempt to bring Judge Dredd to the big screen.
The new Dredd movie, starring Karl Urban as Mega City One’s legendary law enforcer, was shot earlier in the year, and is now in post-production. However, the story, which appeared at the Los Angeles Times, suggested that director Pete Travis had been dismissed from the project, and that writer and co-producer Alex Garland was now in charge of the editing room.
All was not sounding good.
Well, there’s been a fresh update, in that Garland and Travis have released a joint statement, aiming to put the record straight. We should say from the outset that they’re a bit damned if they do, damned if they don’t here. If they stay quiet, people will assume the story to be true. If they make a statement, people will look for the gaps in it.
Here’s what the pair have said:
“During all stages of the filmmaking, Dredd has been a collaboration between a number of dedicated creative parties. From the outset we decided on an unorthodox collaboration to make the film. This situation has been misinterpreted. To set the record straight, Pete was not fired and remains a central part of the collaboration, and Alex is not seeking a co-director credit. We are all extremely proud of the film we have made, and respectfully suggest that it is judged on viewing when its released next year”.
In time, we might find out just what that unorthodox collaboration actually entails. For now, the original story, with the update, is over at the Los Angeles Times, here. And the call to judge the film based on the finished product is, of course, a sensible one.
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