Judge Dredd producer wants Karl Urban back for TV show

An executive producer of the recently-announced TV show Judge Dredd: Mega City One has said it would be “absolutely brilliant” to have Karl Urban reprise the lead role of future lawman Joe Dredd. The Star Trek actor previously played the part in the 2012 film Dredd, which is widely admired by fans of the original 2000 AD comic strip.

“The great thing about Karl is, he’s actually a big fan of the comic book, and he’s a really nice guy, and I know him well enough to speak to him personally,” executive producer Jason Kingsley said on the official 2000 AD podcast earlier this week. “We have had many conversations prior to this about all sorts of different things. He’s also a very busy full-time professional actor. So, we are going to have some long and complicated conversations, I would imagine, and we’ll see where we go. It’s too easy to tell yet. But if we can use him, and he is available to us, then I think that would be absolutely brilliant.”

Urban is certainly a longtime fan of the character. “I turned on to Dredd when I was about 16, working in a pizza parlor in Wellington,” the New Zealand actor told this writer, before the release of the 2012 film. “The manager sort of switched me on to it. It was kind of ironic at the time because most teenagers do sort of rebel against everything to do with authority, and the law, and all that sort of stuff. I really gravitated towards this ultra-brutal representative of the law. I just loved it.”

It was announced earlier this month that independent entertainment studio IM Global and independent U.K. games developer and publisher Rebellion had struck a deal to turn the iconic comic book character into a live-action TV show. As yet, no network is attached to the potential series nor has casting begun in earnest.