why did dredd fail at the box office?

Dredd is a film about a dystopian future of America where crime has taken over the fictional place of mega city one. Its a violent metropolis with over 800 million people and 17,000 crimes reported daily. The high rise tower block 'peach trees' is run by a gang mama clan who are known for their violence. they are producing a new slow-mo drug which makes the brain work at 1% of its normal speed. The only force of justice are the judges, especially judge Dredd. They work as judge, jury and executioner. The judge has taken on a new recruit who has psychic power. The Judges are called in to Peach trees

Producer: Alex Garland

Distributer: Lions Gate Entertainment

Script Writer: Alex Garland

Budget: $45 Million

Box Office Gross: $13,414,714 

Directors and Actors: Pete Travis (Director). Karl Urban (Judge Dredd, also starred in Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings), Olivia Thirlby (Cassandra Anderson, also starred in Juno and No Strings Attached), Lena Headey (Madeline 'MaMa' Madrigal, also starred in Game of Thrones, 300 and St. Trinians) 

The distributers for the film played a huge part in the film getting known and they were; Entertainment Film, Distributers and Lionsgate. Lionsgate are a Canadian or American entertainment company who have distributed lots of huge hollywood films for example  the hunger games, and the power rangers, Both of these are fairly big films therefore Alex Garland  thought going with Lionsgate was a stable choice. The script writer was  John Wagner who has worked on A History of Violence. He worked alongside another script writer called Carlos Eiquerra who worked on Comics Britannia. Both of those films are set in the pasts and seeing as DREDD is set in the future this may have been one of the reasons that the film was not as successful. 

The stars of the film Dredd include new Zealand actor Carl Urban who announced his main part in Dredd at comic con in 2010. Comic con is a huge comic book event and convention that’s all about superheroes so it was an ideal place to announce the news seeing as the film is an adaptation of a comic book.  Carl announced his role in LA.  Also it would get the people interested in the concept of the film because he would be able to talk about what the films going to be about. Carl urban actually earned earned the film company $30 million dollars in pre sales because a lot of people were interested in the concept and it was at comi con, As well as this the distributer paid $7million dollars to show the film in the UK because they thought it would be a big hit. This is surprising because Dredd was actually filmed in Cape-Town in Johannesburg so typically Dredd would of been thought to be an American dominated film. 

Production 

There was two key production tasks in the film, the first being the slo-mo sequences which the film heavily relies on for its special effects considering the film is based around a drug that makes the brain go into slow motion. The same slo-mo sequence was used in never let me go. The lawgiver gun also had to be created to look realistic, this gun was created for the first film in 1995 and it has appeared in the comic book aswell so its very iconic to the character of judge Dredd. There were many issues surrounding the drugs, violence and bad language that the film cannot go 2 minuets without. The film was never going to be a PG due to the gang members heads getting gruesomely blown off and the heavy use of illegal drugs. They wanted to keep the film at an 18 however many consider an 18 certificate to have a huge negative impact on the films sales because it has a smaller target audience. 
Filming of Dredd began on the 12th of november 2010 and it took just around 12-13 weeks to film. The films were shot digitally and in 3D using Red MX, S12K and phantoms flex high speed camera. This is so that the audience has the option to watch the film in 3D as well as 2D. various camera rigs had to be installed for these cameras to be used. 

Post - production. 
The tower blocks of mega city one were an issue for the production team as they tried to replicate the tower blocks from the comic book, the inital idea was to make the tall new buildings look like they were overpowering the old world, however by copying the comic book ones it just made the city look small. They then made the set very spread out so the tower blocks looked very overpowering and taller, thats why in the film in the shot above the city everything is extremely spread out. Another issue was that there were dissagreements between the main editor and some of the production team and executives, somone had to take over at late notice, the main editor then just oversaw the production of the film and there was a statement of 'unorthodox collaboration' which meant the original editor still got credit.

Distribution and marketing.
Dredd was shown in 2,506 cinemas and 2,200 of them being in 3D, therefore there wasnt really much choice whether the viewer saw them In 2D or not, this caused various problems, to start with many people do not like 3D anymore, the novelty has worn off and it has just become another short lived trend, and also it costs extra to watch a film in 3D and some people would of refused to pay it when they could watch a different film for less. To advertise the film they had to do a lot of their marketing virally, and also did a huge presentation at comic con to the under 25's which was their target market for the film. The film won an award for their trailer called the 'golden trailer award' this meant that when the trailer was being shown it would say it had won an award and may tempt people to go and watch the film.

The film made absolutely no money at all at the box office, the budget for the film was $45 million and it reached $41 million at the box office, to try and make some money the film company removed the option to watch the film in 2D and therefore people would have to watch the film in 3D and pay more for a ticket, leading to more money being made, i think this was one of the main reasons the film did not succeed as i mentioned before not everyone enjoys watching 3D or has the money to spend considering cinema tickets are very expensive these days. 18% of people are actually physically uncapable of watching a 3D movie so that would of damaged the views of the film to start with, this is one of the main reasons why no big block buster hits choose this strategy. Another major error of from the film company was when it was released, it was released after 'the raid' came out, and without knowing they both had very similar plots, a lot of people had gone to see the raid instead of Dredd which damaged the box office figures. Suprisingly the film did very well in the DVD sales, it sold 650,000 copies and blu-ray made up half of that figure so they made a lot of money from DVD's, this could be down to people refusing to watch it in 3D as it would be more expensive and proves that it was a bad marketing idea.

so how come Dredd did fail at the box office? there are many reasons for the film being a failure, the first being that it was an 18 certificate and that means less people can go and see it at the cinema, i think that if the film was a 15 it would of been a lot more successfull considering that the dvd sales were very high and peaked at number 1 which shows that it wasnt that people werent interested its just that possibly its because they couldnt go and see the film at the cinema. Another reason that the film wasnt very successfull is because the advertisement campaign was not very good, it was mostly just aimed towards british and american audiences and there was no real effort to market the film globally which cuts out a huge percentage of the population who potentially could be going to watch the film and making the film company more money. But i think that the main reason that Dredd failed was because it was never really a very popular comic book in the fist place, it is a marvel comic book and they have huge hollywood films such as spiderman, the avengers, hulk etc, these are all extremely popular and people love to go and watch these films at the cinema, and also were massive as comic books, but Dredd on the other hand never got to these stages of popularity, the comic book will always be in the shadow of these characters and their storylines.

comparing the film to other marvel comic book remakes such as the avengers there are clear reasons why Dredd was not as successfull, for example the avengers budget was $220 million whereas Dredds was just over $40 million, this shows that the more money you spend on a film the more you are going to make back, this is why the avengers made $1.518 billion at the box office while Dredd made barely $40 million. Also the avengers had huge hollywood actors starring in it, dont get me wrong Karl urban is a well respected actor but he has nothing on the likes of robert downey junior, Scarlett Johansen, jeremy renner, and samuel L jackson. Also all of these characters in avengers have had films based around them and made lots of money so a film that has all of these hollywood characters in was never going to not make money.
However Dredd did recieve some very good reviews, which makes people question why it didnt do very well, this again makes my point even stronger that dredd is not a classic comic book, whereas the avengers is.