Okay, full disclosure: I'd love to see The Cold Deck adapted into a movie because, in my most unrealistic moments, I like to imagine the Dredd movie universe expanding, Marvel-style, to encompass a solo Mega City Undercover movie and The Simping Detective, eventually building up to the recent, huge, amazing Trifecta crossover that this storyline sets up. Obviously that's never going to happen - and yet we're getting multiple Spider-Man spin-off movies, the ginks - but a boy can dream, can't he? The Cold Deck instead focuses on Mega City-One in a state of chaos. Which was caused by the aptly-titled Day of Chaos, where most of the city (and its occupants) are destroyed by the Dark Judges, amongst other things. Obviously that storyline wouldn't work in the setting of a Dredd movie, but it could be a good starting point - maybe have Mega-City One decimated by a dirty bomb or something - which limits the locations again, and has Dredd in a slightly more sympathetic role, trying to pick up the pieces after a huge disaster and loss of life, trying to force order on a city even more resistant to it than in the first film.
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/
