7/27/2019 Why Did Dredd Fail at the Box Office Essay

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Emily Woolley

Why did dredd fail at the box office?

Dredd (2012) was a British South African film that was released in 2012; theBritish used a South African studio and was shot in Johannesburg and Cape

Town, South Africa, and parts of England too.It is a science fiction action film directed by Pete Travis and written and producedby Alex Garland and there budget was 35 million so Hollywood didnt want to beinvolved as they didnt see any potential to make any more. It is 95 minutes long

Dredd (2012) was released on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download on 8 January2013 in North America, and 14 January in the UK. During its first week on sale inthe UK, Dredd was the number 1 selling DVD and Blu-ray. Dredd was primarilyshown in 3D in the UK, Dredd earned a total of $6.9 million in the UK, $36.5million was made from box office, for a film released on box office this is verylittle, this could be for many reasons which I will include in this essay.

Dredd was a graphic novel in the UK in 1977 There was also the US film adaption

Judge Dredd in 1995 which was an American science fiction action film directedby Danny Cannon, and starring Sylvester Stallone. This film was based on the2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd but was updated to be more modern andsuitable for our generation by the main character being an officer that protectsthe city. The US film wasnt faithful because he kept taking his mask off so theaudience knew that he was Sylvester Stallone, whereas other superhero filmstheir identity remains unknown and the film was unknown in the states becauseit was a British comic strip in the past so was only known in the UK so therefore itbombed. Dredd was made to compete with the US; it has a bad reputationalready and doesnt include any British culture or an A-list star, whereas the filmbrave (which I will later explain) included 3 A-list stats, Julie Walters, BillyConnolly and Emma Thompson and also it was based in Scotland including kings,queens, castles, horses etc. so is a lot closer to the British heritage than Dreddwhich was all based around a fake superhero. It also has age rating of 18 sochildren cant watch it because their too young whereas the other superherofilms are aimed at children so it doesnt fit in the quadrants with children so theyhave already limited the number of people that can watch the film because a lotof cinema tickets are sold to families or young teenagers (around 16).

Superhero films are everywhere now days because of a new software calledCGI, this software allows people make them at a high quality than they evercould before, with the CGI it may attract males 26+ because of the fact its acartoon and aimed more at the stereotypical geeky males. Marvel comics and DC

are the main Comics around. Marvel includes Spiderman and the avengers thenDC is batman and superman. Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby Wood Harris, LenaHeadey were the main stars of the film. The film was shot digitally and primarilyin 3D using RED MX. Pete Travis thought that the whole film being in 3D will givemake the comic book impression would come too life more than it would in 2Dbecause the 3D film makes it look more realistic. Again this has limited thereviewers because not everyone likes 3D films many people dont like wearing theglasses, and a small minority of people cant watch 3D due to making them feelill.

7/27/2019 Why Did Dredd Fail at the Box Office Essay

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Emily Woolley

If you compare dredd to a film like Disneys Brave, Dredds post productionincluded the filmmakers experimented with the visuals of Mega-City One,including the design and positioning of the city's tower blocks, to create theimpression that the city had risen out of the remains of another. The outcropsand appendages were added to break up the buildings' straight lines. Garland, a

novelist-turned-screenwriter was in charge of editing Dredd, with the help ofother producers Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich they may have had to doreshoots as well.Whereas Brave is a computer-animated fantasy film, no reshoots were neededbecause everything was created by software exactly how they wanted but maymore people were employed for various things. Braves budget was $185million so they had the money to employee a different person for each job sothat its all perfect. Brave is a Disney film and as Disney is very well known sothey already have a guarantee of Disney fans watching the film, also because itsage rating is PG and its an animated film families are very likely to go and watchit at the cinema or on box office. It made $538,983,207 at box office which is alot anyway especially compared to Dredds $36.5 million. Brave being Disneyalso gave them good advertising as the main character, Merida who is played byKelly McDonald, would be classed as one of the Disney princesss so would be inall images of them together, also Brave had cross convergence which was anapp created based on Merida and in the Disney theme parks Merida has her ownarchery games which all promotes the film. Whereas Dredd didnt have theseopportunities.Dredd was mainly filmed in South Africa because it was a lot cheaper than usingall British studios, but they were still spending money on getting too the location,hiring places, cameras, crew etc. but on the other hand Brave saved money onall of those things so could spend it on high tech software and people, with ahigh level of knowledge in what theyre doing, to hire.