Taika Waititi Set To Direct Novel Judge Dredd Movie

Now here’s a bit of eye-catching movie news that we imagine nobody had on their 2025 bingo cards. THR are reporting that Taika Waititi — the Kiwi funnyman and filmmaker responsible for the likes of Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit, and both Thor: Ragnarok and Love And Thunder — has just added another project to his ever-stacked plate: a modern Judge Dredd movie. And, what’s more, he’s bringing The Fall Guy and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation scribe Drew Pearce along for the ride into Mega-City One.

While Waititi’s eclectic filmography to date may not immediately suggest that he’s the prime candidate to bring 2000 AD comics’ iconic judge, jury, and bloody brutal executioner — previously given the cinematic treatment with Sylvester Stallone back in 1995, then Karl Urban in 2012’s Alex Garland penned Dredd — back to the huge screen, THR‘s sources are quick to point out that Taika and Pearce are firm friends who both grew up reading the comics and who’ve been looking for a project to team up on for years. Promisingly, the trade’s understanding is that the movie, which has been the talk of the town in Hollywood as Waititi and Pearce look to sell their tantalising package, is being pitched as a more faithful interpretation of the tone and spirit of the comics than past adaptations, meaning we could be in for a more darkly comic take on Dredd than we’ve seen before. And given the director-writer duo’s comic chops, you can at the very least rely on them to bring laughs to John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s morally — and architecturally — murky metropolis.

Understood to be ‘a fun sci-fi blockbuster that nonetheless speaks to this moment in culture’, plot specifics on Taika Waititi and Drew Pearce’s Judge Dredd joint are being kept, like Judge’s own chisel-jawed mug, firmly under cover for the time being. But with the filmmakers already hopeful that this could be the beginning of a modern Dredd universe across movies and television, and the enduring popularity of the comics and cult classic status of the last two movies long since affirming the character’s chokehold on our collective imagination, it does seem like it’s high-time we had some Dredd to cheer for once again. We’ll go fetch the Lawmaster and catch you down the multiplex!