John Wagner from Facebook:
Just back from the set. I wasn't able to take any photos, I'm afraid, still bound by the official secrets act, but if you want to throw any questions at me I'll answer what I can. Cape Town and surrounding country was absolutely stunning. The film occupies all four giant buildings at the new Cape Town Studios. Sets looked great - grim!
He also went on to say:
Very pleased with what I saw of Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby. Both excellent in their roles and work well as a team. Entire crew really dedicated and determined to produce a damned good movie. Sadly I had to leave before I could see them shooting any ultra-vi. Extremely impressed by the 3-D - apart from the demo at Universal Studios in LA, my memories were of the feeble efforts I saw as a youth. This is a real quantum leap from that, really adds depth. This is going to be good.
Wagner talks about Alex Garland (screenwriter):
Alex Garland and I have had our disagreements but he has usually had a convincing argument for doing things his way. On the main issue, concentrating the plot on a slice of life rather than trying to convey the whole sweep of Dredd and Mega-City life, I now see that he's right. It was one of the flaws of the first movie, they tried to do too much. I just had a brief conversation with Karl, he's much too hard at work to spare a lot of time. There was one shot where the camera focused in on his face, a reaction to Anderson, and I swear Carlos could have drawn that scowl.
Had high praise for Karl urban playing Judge Dredd and much more:
Only got to see a partial shell of a lawmaster, so can't really comment, but did handle a lawgiver. Looked good. Plenty of attention's been given to the script already and of course everything at the moment is a little fluid, so where rewriting has to be done it gets done. Don't know anything about a dedicated film website but I imagine DNA will do something like that. There was plenty of graffiti, David, and there was nothing I can think of that I thought was bad or wrong. Karl, when he's acting (and even when he's not!), IS Judge Dredd.
The uniform was still fairly paramilitary, but it works for me.
I saw them setting up a lot of stuff for SFX but didn't get to see the final result. While in the FX dept a huge explosion went off - practically jumped out of my skin. Max the tech trying to figure out how to explode a lawgiver without killing the actor using it!
Wagner also liked South Africa for Mega-City One:
...was very Mega-City. South Africa's got something of Mega-City about it in any case.
When asked about Judge death:
Not on this film.
LEEE777 - With all this positivity and praise for this 2000AD production, I'm buzzing for this film now, really looking forward to it, how about you?
Fingers crossed we get a sequel and Judge Death with the Dark Judges will be in it!