John Wagner - Screen Adaptations

Screen Adaptations

A TV film of The Bogie Man was made in 1992 by BBC Scotland starring Robbie Coltrane, but was not well received and a series was never made. Wagner and Grant made very little money out of it. Wagner felt that the screenwriter did a poor job adapting it, and Coltrane did not understand the character.

1995 saw the release of Judge Dredd, a big budget version of the comic directed by Danny Cannon and starring Sylvester Stallone. Wagner was unhappy with the result, feeling they had filmed "the wrong script" and that "Stallone was badly advised". A second attempt at adapting the character to the screen, entitled Dredd, was released in September 2012, directed by Pete Travis from a script by Alex Garland, and starring Karl Urban. This time Wagner was consulted over the script, was involved in the promotion of the film, and has described it as "unlike the first film, a true representation of Judge Dredd".

In 2005 his graphic novel A History Of Violence was adapted into a film, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris. Wagner had backed the film once he saw the group of actors Cronenberg had gathered. The film was nominated for the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2005, and the script, by Josh Olson, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2005.

It was reported in May 2012 that Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn was in talks with DreamWorks about a possible Button Man film.