Why Did Dredd Fail At The Box Office?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dredd is an adaptation on the 2000AD comic book.

 

 

In 2012 Dredd was finally released after its 3 year filming process came to a close and it hit the big screens. The film was produced by Alex Garland, Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich. Film was distributed by Entertainment Film and Lionsgate and written by Alex Garland.

Dredd had so many different factors for all Sci-Fi fans. The dystopian themed movie had various aspects of it that appealed to all types of movie goers but it was not enough.





It was very unlikely that Dredd would be a success at the box office but one of the huge factors of Dredd doing so bad in the box office was due to the fact that it was rated 18. The movie was fairly gruesome and parts that include sexual references, straight away making the movie an 18 it narrows down the audience to above 18, this contrasts with all other superhero movies such as Thor which had a lower age rating so Thor appealed to a wider range of audiences than Dredd due to the film not being as gruesome. Marvel films are usually 12A(UK and Ireland) Or PG 13(USA) so this veered regular marvel fans away from going to see Dredd because it was not in its expected age range for a marvel film so people avoided watching it due to the fact they didn’t know what to expect.





There's no hiding from the fact that Superhero movies are everywhere, (E.g. Thor, Iron man, Superman, Etc...) most of these movies appeal to all the genres of movie watchers, they have happy endings with a clear hero who saves the day and gets the girl. This is well in contrast with Dredd. Dredd is an anti-hero, he gets the job done and doesn’t care about ‘getting the girl’ or looking tough for the audience, this is why the movie wouldn’t appeal to many people because the mainstream movie goers wouldn’t want to go and see this film because it doesn’t have the iconic ending of the mainstream action/superhero movie, this narrows down the audience completely. Another key factor in Dredd failing is a very similar movie called ‘The Raid’ was released at the same time, the movie was a foreign movie which would instantly wipe out the aficionados Audience. Dredd was a big Hollywood film this would wash away all of the Film buffs audience doesn’t like to watch big Hollywood films they like to watch low budget films with little advertisement and that don’t really include any big movie stars. These factors contributed to the little success of Dredd greatly being only able to appeal to one type of movie goers makes it very hard to make a profit. The task of advertising this movie was very hard because of the fact it only appealed to one audience.





The fact that Dredd did not have a huge movie star that appealed to the public did not help the matters of Dredd failing at the box office, Kyle Urban is known in the Sci-Fi world greatly but not much out of that so he does not appeal to other audiences, compare this to Thor which had huge movie stars such as Chris Hemmingsworth and Natalie Portman In an Kyle Urban just doesn’t compare to those huge actors.

Dredd proved Mark Kermode's theory correct; Dredd only followed 2/4 of Marks Kermode's ideas. The movie was not a comedy and it had spectacular visuals. Dredd did not have an A list star or a newsworthy budget which in my opinion are the two most important factors in having a successful movie, if Dredd had a big movie star it probably would of done a lot better than it did, saying this the movie wouldn't of stuck to the comic book version where Dredd never takes his helmet off but if they had and A list star they would of made him take the mask off to show his face so it would sell more.

The movie Dredd was a fail at the box office, there's no hiding from that fact, but Dredd failing is in great contrast with its distributer. Lionsgate is a huge film distributing company and it distributed Dredd, Lionsgate have quite a good record with successful movies but Dredd is not one of these.

Arguably the biggest aspect of Dredd failing at the box office was that at the majority of cinemas the movie was shown in 3D. When Pete Travis started filming Dredd 3D was very new and everyone wanted to watch every movie in 3D because it was so new, but when they finally released Dredd, 3 years after they started filming, 3D wasn't that rare anymore and not many people were bothered about it. People would not want to pay '3D Prices' to see a movie that didn't have much hype about it or have a huge star. If they had made it available in 2D at more cinemas the movie might of not been such a flop and made more of its money in the box office. For example Leicester's closest cinema that showed Dredd (2012) in 2D was in Nottingham. People would rather just wait for the DVD to come out or just to see a movie that only appealed to one movie audience.  

In my opinion Dredd is a fantastic movie with spectacular visuals and a great lead role, everything in the movie was performed to a great effect, saying this, I hadn't even heard about the film until we watched it in class, the movie was clearly poorly advertised and was not news worthy because I had never read anything about Dredd, I didn't even know what Dredd was until we watched and talked about it in class.

Overall Dre was a huge disappointment in the money that it made, plans for a Dredd 2 are in the works and they need to address all these issues and develop on them, they need to get a bigger budget and a huge star then I have no doubt Dredd will be successful.