Dredd is set in the dystopian future of America on the East Coast, an area which is inhabited and taken over by criminals. The only order which is upheld is by the urban cops known as the 'Judges' who have the power to carry out instant executions if they decide it necessary, Dredd is the ultimate Judge and is renowned throughout the city. The city's major problem which is spreading throughout the city is a new drug being dispensed known as 'Slo-mo', which makes the brain work at 1% of its normal everyday speed and is being produced and sold by the street drug lord 'Ma Ma'. The whole operation is run from the tower block 'Peach Trees' and Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate Cassandra Anderson, a rookie with powerful psychic abilities whilst performing a drug bust on one of the leaders who runs the operation in the building. Upon performing the raid, they capture one of Ma Ma's thugs named Kay. Once Ma Ma hears of this she fears he may talk, leading to her sealing the building with Dredd and co inside. This leads to Ma Ma placing a bounty on their heads for everyone in the mega block, a fight ensues and Dredd and Anderson must fight to survive the night.
The films type/genre is Crime thriller which suits the films storyline and action scenes. It was produced by DNA films, I M global and Reliance entertainment and released in 2012 with it based on a re-make of the previous version which was released on the 30th June 1995. Dredd starred Karl Urban, Wood Harris, Olivia Thirlby and Lena Headey.
The main reasons for Dredd's lack of success in the Box Office was its unfortunate similarity with the film 'Raid' which was released shortly before its release, this caused a remarkable drop in figures as customer caught on to its similar story line. In addition another mistake the production company made was giving it an 18 certificate, this prevented younger viewers going to see it and caused a drop in figures as apart from avid comic book readers, the film would mainly appeal to younger viewers with an appetite for the superhumans. This may have not appealed to an older audience.Furthermore due to Dredd being owned by Marvel it failed to comply with normal certificated of 12A or PG12 which other superhero films followed.
Although Dredd was made to compete with the U.S films it never really reached the standard of Blockbusters at that time, this was due to films such as Avengers dominating the U.S box office.
Moreover another factor to Dredds apparent lack of success was due to there being other superhero films with more substantial storylines/plots, this again clashed with The Avengers as it contained sub plots which linked in with separate films made by Marvel such as Iron man, Captain America, and the Incredible Hulk. In hindsight Dredds low budget of $45 Million and lack of Star names was always going to struggle with big time Hollywood blockbusters with large budgets of around $220 Million and a star studded cast. This lead to Dredd earning just $41 million in boxoffice and The Avengers earning $1.518 billion, this shows the importance of having a cast with that many big names.
It was shown in 2,506 locations and cinemas and 2,200 of them were 3D, which only leaves 306 locations which were only 2D. So if you didn't like it you would have to travel a long way to go and see it in 2D if you didn't live near one of the locations were its being shown in 2D. So most likely people who wanted to see it but did not want to see it in 3D and didn't live near a 2D screening would just not go and see it. 18% of people cant even go and see 3D films due to physical reasons. That’s a chunk of the there audience gone already unless they live near one of the 306 locations were it was shown in 2D. Furthermore 3D is more expensive than 2D so people may not want to pay the extra money to go and see the film. Another thing is that people may not like 3D in general for example it may be annoying having to wear the glasses for a large amount of time. They then took an unusual step to try and make more people see it by getting rid of being able to see it in 2D which just made it worst as a lot of people don’t like 3D and now they could not see the film at all.
Dan, you must address the question sooner, it takes until paragraph 3 for you to respond to the actual task, everything you write must be connected to the task.
ReplyDeleteYour point about competition with "The Raid" would be enhanced if you included release dates, box office and audience categories (look at the ppt I used to see which audience categories might apply). Likewise if you're going to claim that film didn't match the standards of blockbusters you MUST establish what these standards are.
Try and link to the 3D release pattern to audience types, was the target audience of this film an audience who would be attracted by 3D.
You also need to explore star power and marketing Dan.