Why did Dredd flop at the Box Office?

The film Dredd was first released on the 7^th of September 2012, as a 3D only film. This film was widely recognized before it had even been released due to previous hype around the failed 1995 version, staring Stallone, based upon the comic book, though this was a previous flop, as the character Dredd, had shown his face in the film, however the mask symbol was never to be originally unveiled, leaving Dredd fans distraught, knowing that the whole plot had been twisted. The film was on a tight budget, at 45 million dollars, with most of the spending being on the 3D cameras involved and no 2D screenings were to be distributed yet. The failure of Dredd was to be expected… after the poor effort from the previous film, the low budget and lack of marketing, all of these contributing factors proved that Dredd was ill-fated even before the release of the popular comic to become a film, but what else was devoted to making the film such a failure?

Judge Dredd is a fictional character whose comic strip in the British science fiction anthology 2000 AD, is the magazine's longest running, having been featured since its second issue in 1977 and is one of the most highly/well known comic strip characters known. The first film, which was created in 1995, staring Sylvester Stallone, directed by Danny Cannon, has proven to be a massive failure previously, due to its lack of being able to follow the story line of the original comic book, in which its fans had adore. The film was such a big flop, what could possibly go wrong for Pete Travis, after all, he knew all the faults, in the 1995 version, that had to be changed to turn the film around to be much more desirable for its long awaiting audience, he pretty much had it all covered for him to be able to recreate one of the most highly respected comic book stories of all time. Though he had the previous version to base off on, this proved quite challenging for Travis, and thought you think he would have recreated his own, improved film of the previous one, his version of Dredd (2012) proved to be a flop too, this was shown through many different areas in his work. The actors used in the newest version of Dredd were fairly unknown and were definitely not classed as “A-List” stars. Though Karl Urban has been based in a wide variety of science-based films previously, his reputation had not gained as much recognition and the parts in which he played in different films, such as Star Trek or RED, were not classed as main parts. This brought less attention for the film and its fan base was not as near enough as big as it could have been if A-List stars were to be used, e.g. Ryan Gosling. Pete Travis himself, was also not a huge phenomenon in the directing industry, he had been fairly new to film production, as he has only directed 3 films from 2004. His main work was included in the TV, in series such as, The Jury, Home Farm Twins and Cold Feet. His lack of success in the film industry also brings the fan base for the film down as he is not as well known, in comparison to if Tim Burton were to direct the film.

Another contributing factor would be the budget of the film. The film was only released in 3D as it was recorded on the highly expensive 3D cameras, which took up most of their budget for the film. Each 3D camera used for the filming of Dredd would have cost around $500,000, this cost will soon begin to add up as the number of cameras begin to increase, proving that most of the budget used for the film was mainly used for the shooting of it. The budget was already proving that it was limited and was quite a small amount of money in comparison to other films which were brought out in the same year e.g. The Amazing Spiderman; budget – $230 million, Skyfall 007; budget - $200 million and Prometheus; budget – $130 million. When comparing Dredd to any of the previous films we can see the significant difference in budget, however the reason for this could be that these films are produced by global institutions such as Hollywood, whereas Dredd was a British made film, proving less dominant than bigger/more successful film franchises, ultimately showing the competition in which the film faced in 2012, this would be especially tricky for Travis as the people involved in the directing of the films above were much more well known than he was. The expenditure of the 3D camera Travis decided to use, proved costly, in both money and the distribution of the film, especially in marketing. This left little money for the film to be able to be distributed widely for a larger audience, leaving the number of people who were aware of the film to be released, limited. The fact that the film was mainly filmed with 3D cameras/ Red x cameras leads onto the point that some cinemas were unable to display the film when it first came out e.g. Art house/ other independent cinemas, obviously this would drag the ratings and size of the audience down for the film, as it was not widely available for everyone to view.

Pete Travis has managed to incorporate a large amount of violence, gore and sexual scenes throughout the whole of the film, making the certificate of the film an 18. In comparison with other films made that year, such as Avengers Assemble, being a 12A, this shows that this type of film can include the same amount of action as Dredd, with better graphics and HD quality, as well as it being an interesting film, for all of the family to enjoy. By cutting out a large amount of the audience (being under 18) this means they were decreasing in the amount of audience in which the film could potentially be distributed to, which could also potentially increase the spread of the films popularity, whether that be globally or virally – either way the film would have gained much more of an audience if the film were to be considered as appropriate to younger viewers. For the film to become more successful they would need to make sure that it is accessible for all ages/areas of audience in order to make the film much more appealing, rather than aiming the film at an older generation, which is one of the main reasons why they got the profit in which they did, by making it widely available to everyone, they could essentially increase their profit by a significant amount, making the film much more successful.

The production of the film was mainly based in South Africa, Cape Town in late 2010 during the San Diego Comic-Con International; this ultimately lowered the cost for the production side of the film. It was lowered specifically when employing cast and crew members (40 of which were imported) compared to if they were to film in Europe/ America. South Africa is an unlikely place where global institutions would be filming, to create a top grossing film, filmed somewhere like America, we are able to see the cost difference in the different locations in which they were filmed, showing that Dredd was a fairly cheap in the location side of the production. Even though they had proven to be saving money in Cape Town, this did not benefit the marketing side of the project, where this was a big downfall in distribution to a wide audience. Not only was the whole production location a total flop, but so was the location of the city within it, “Mega City One”, the lack of change in location made the film very tedious to watch, as the dark and dreary atmosphere that followed the characters throughout the film beckoned sheepishly at the audience without the intention of engrossing them, unlike the film Avengers Assemble where the scenes are constantly changing with a variety of different backgrounds making the audience engage solely on what was happening at a particular point. The director, Joss Whedon, though he has not be part of many major productions has proved that he knows how to create a potentially popular film, with the likes of Toy Story, being a big hit with all audiences. This comparison shows the distinct features of how different directors who have gained more experience with the production of their more popular films are able to adapt to different audiences to be able to produce quality films, appealing to everyone, unlike Pete Travis, who has yet to gain more experience with higher quality films, as he has mainly been working as a TV series director through his career, he is not yet widely recognized in the film industry.

The lack of marketing for the film proved costly for Pete Travis as his aim was never to fully gain worldwide recognition for the film, how could he? He’d spent most of the budget on the production of the film, yet this had not even proved to have been the successful part of the project. Dredd, like any other standard film, released a teaser of the official trailer, and after that the actual trailer, however these 2 marketing attempts were not the main areas of distribution he used, in fact he used a website called, “The Dredd Report” (A spin-off of “The Drudge Report”) to market and distribute his new film. His intentions were good, Travis used social networking as a form of being able to gain a larger audience for the release of the film, knowing that social networking is now becoming increasingly popular, being one of the most powerful sources to be able to share things with the world. Another large input to distributing the film would be Lionsgate. Lionsgate was to be seen as one of the main contributors when marketing this film and was ultimately the “pick up” for the film to be able to even remotely be recognized by the America audience. Other popular films such as The Hunger Games and The Possession were also market and distributed by Lionsgate in the same year, so it’s no wonder that Dredd got lost in all of the fiasco, with these other 2 (and more) films about, as profit proved higher for these two films than it did Dredd, but was this Lionsgate’s fault? Being a “mini-major” studio distributing global instituted films, it’s probably not possible to blame Lionsgate for this mess of marketing Dredd, they were ultimately the improvement of Dredd’s worldwide distribution in the end, the main loss to this area of the production of the film, would be the money left over to be able to advertise the film effectively, or in this case, ineffectively.

In conclusion, overall, I would base the flop of Dredd, solely on the budget in which the film was provided with and how the director of the film, Pete Travis decided to spend it. We can see from the areas in which were spent the most on in the production of the film e.g. 3D cameras, that they did not benefit the films overall end product greatly. Many cinemas were unable to display the films leaving less opportunity for the film to be distributed worldwide. Another main factor of the flop of Dredd would be the competitive Market in which it faced in 2012. Some of the most grossing films were released during this time, e.g. Gangster Squad, The Amazing Spiderman, Skyfall 007 etc., proving that the film would have to be considerably superior to the market in which it faced, however this proved difficult, for many reasons e.g. the low budget and the lack of “A-List” actors/production team that were involved, which ultimately contributed to the lack of popularity as well as the flop of the entire film.