I've already mentioned it a few times, and it's hard not too: The Cursed Earth as a location is one of the most iconic parts of the Judge Dredd character, almost as important as the helmet, the gun, the bike and the city. It even appeared in the 1995 film We Do Not Speak Of Apart From Now, but hopefully that won't put anybody off. Because the original Cursed Earth story is one of the series' first epics, and a damn fine one at that. That said, there probably are a number of changes they'd have to make in bringing the story to the screen. Whilst the core concept of The Cursed Earth story is fine - the West Coast's Mega-City Two suffers an outbreak of a deadly virus to which Mega-City One have the only antidote, so Dredd has to risk his life travelling across the irradiated No Man's Land to deliver it - the window dressing is a little less so. In fact 2000 AD was sued by the likes of McDonalds, Burger King and the Jolly Green Giant for featuring their mascots as psychopathic leaders of murderous gangs that roam the Cursed Earth. Not only would the filmmakers want to avoid any such legal trouble, they'd also wanna avoid anything that stupid.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
