One of the main reasons Dredd failed at the box office is because it was up against 3 other major films starring comic book heroes. These films were The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spiderman and The Avengers. Dredd was released as a rival as it was a UK based film and comic whereas the USA was where originally most comic book heroes would come from. As all three of the films Dredd was up against were USA based it would have to fight really hard to compete against them. Dredd didn’t have any major actors in the films and the comic book series was hardly known around the world. If Dredd has acquired bigger actors to take part in the film would have certainly made more money at the box office. The actors used in Dredd were Karl Urban (Judge Dredd) who isn’t a very famous actor and Olivia Thirby (Anderson) who has only just come into the film business. Because there was no big actors in the film this meant that hardly anybody wanted to go and watch the film which caused the film to lose money at the box office.
Pete Travis is a director who is very inexperienced in the film making industry as he had only made two other films before directing Dredd. The other two films in which he directed were Endgame which only grossed $9,600 at the box office and the other film he directed was Vantage Point which almost doubled its profit at the box office making around $72,200,000. Karl Urban turned to one of the producers (Alex Garland) for direction instead of Pete Travis the director, this shows that even Karl Urban thought Pete Travis wasn’t a good director as he turned to someone else for direction.
Dredd is an Action/Crime/Sci-Fi film which is a problem as only certain people like Sci-Fi films as it only really fits to a certain crowd of people. Dredd is seen as a cult film and hasn’t really got a wide audience but tailors to the ones it has. Most of the people who would of gone to see Dredd would have been comic book lovers as they would have read the comic books about Dredd (2000AD) and would have wanted to see the film version of the comic. The film is also a certificate 18 which means only people aged 18 and over could go to watch the film. This is where they lost views at the box office because other comic book films such as The Amazing Spiderman, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers Assemble were all 12A meaning younger people who would want to watch these films could go to the cinema and watch the film with their parents. If Dredd had been a 12A film meaning it had lost all its gore and violence it maybe would have gained more viewers at the box office allowing the film to gross more money and to have maybe made a profit.
Lionsgate was one of the top distributers of Dredd and one of its partners was Alliance as it also distributed Dredd. There were a few production companies that were linked with Dredd such as DNA Films, IM Global, Peach Trees and Rena Films. These production companies are not the biggest production companies in the world meaning because they are quite unknown Dredd didn’t get as much appeal as it would have done with a bigger production company.
The box office figures that Dredd produced were not the best of figures as it had a budget of $35,000,000 and in its opening week at the box office it made around $6,300,000 and its gross was roughly $ 13,400,000. These figures show that Dredd lost money at the box office and flopped as a film.
The marketing of the film was one of the main reasons that the film flopped at the box office. The marketing scheme used for Dredd was terrible as they set up a website to allow the public to read the latest happenings in the production of the film and a comic book tie in was released as a prequel of the film showing the past life of Ma-Ma and her life as a prostitute before she became the clan leader.
The filming that took place in Dredd was filmed in Cape Town because it was cheap and they didn’t want to spend money on building sets and it was the first time Pete Travis had filmed using 3D cameras. The cinematographer was Anthony Dod Mantle and for the filming of Dredd they used red mysterium x cameras. The mysterium x camera shoots 14 megapixel. This camera shoots 120 frames per second at 5k or 300 frames per second at 3k. One of the reasons why Dredd flopped at the box office was because its run time was only 95 minutes long whereas Amazing Spiderman had a run time of 136 minutes and The Dark Knight Rises had a run time of 165 minutes.
The distributors of Dredd wanted it to be shown in 3D as they denied the 2D requests around the world. In north America 2506 cinemas showed Dredd in their movie screen allowing the film to gain $6,300,000 at the opening weekend and in the UK only 415 cinemas decided to show Dredd allowing the film to gain $1,700,000 at the opening weekend. North America stopped showing Dredd after 42 days of it being in the cinemas.
Dredd was not set out to be a four quadrant movie as it didn’t attract all types of people the main people the film attracted were male viewers over the age of 25. Dredd didn’t appeal to women around the world and it didn’t even appeal to most people under the age of 25. This is one of the reasons why it lost money at the box office as it didn’t appeal to all markets. 69% of viewers were over 25 and 75% of viewers were male.
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