Dredd and his rookie partner, Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), are forced to bring order to a 200-storey high-rise block of apartments and deal with its resident drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey).

The theatrical gross made a sequel unlikely, but home media sales and fan efforts endorsed by 2000 AD's publisher Rebellion Developments have maintained the possibility of a second film.

In response, Ma-Ma's forces seize the tower's security control room and seal the building using its nuclear blast shields to prevent the Judges from leaving or summoning help.

They reach the seventy-sixth floor where Ma-Ma and her men launch an assault with rotary cannons that tear apart the walls and kill numerous residents, although the Judges evade harm.

Angered by the innocent deaths caused during Ma-Ma's assault, Dredd beats Kay for information, deducing she is desperate to prevent him from being interrogated.

A pair of armed teens confront the Judges and, while they are distracted, Kay frees himself and disarms Anderson, capturing and taking her by elevator to Ma-Ma's base on the top floor.

Meanwhile, Judges Volt and Guthrie arrive to support Dredd, but Ma-Ma's computer expert convinces them that the blast doors are malfunctioning and cannot be opened.

Reasoning that the detonator's signal will not reach the explosives from the ground floor, Dredd forces Ma-Ma to inhale Slo-Mo and throws her down the atrium to her death.

[25] Langley Kirkwood, Edwin Perry, Karl Thaning, and Michele Levin portray, respectively, the corrupt Judges Lex, Alvarez, Chan, and Kaplan.

[28][29] By May 2010, this partnership saw IM Global and its owner Reliance Big Pictures agree to co-finance the 3-D project with a $45 million production budget, and a schedule to begin filming in Johannesburg, South Africa in late 2010.

His Judge uniform was altered from the comic version; an extruded eagle statuette was removed from his shoulder pad to emphasise the outfit's functionality and give it a sense of realism.

Wagner described the necessity of adaptation from the source material and said that the 1995 film's attempt to directly replicate the comic's motorcycle was unable to steer because the tyres were too large.

The filmmakers experimented with blood bags, prosthetics, shooting real bullets, and compressed air to see the effect of direct body hits in slow motion.

While observing scouting photos of Cape Town, the filmmakers noticed a large three-walled external space that looked like an interior when filmed at night.

A key sequence involving Ma-Ma and her gang firing rotary cannons across the atrium in their attempt to kill Judge Dredd required ten days of filming and eight different sets inside and outside the studio which were blended together with visual effects.

[29][43] On 7 October 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that Travis was prohibited from participating in the editing process following creative disagreements between producers and executives.

Garland said that Portishead instrumentalist Geoff Barrow "sent me a link to a Justin Bieber song slowed down 800 times and it became this stunning trippy choral music."

[62] The film also features songs by artists including: "Poison Lips" by Vitalic; "Dubstride" by Yann McCullough and Gemma Kicks; "Snuffbox" by Matt Berry; "Pontiac Moon" by Robert J. Walsh; and "Jubilee (Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around)" by Bobby Womack.

[63] A tie-in comic book was published; its plot serves as a prequel to the film's narrative and follows Ma-Ma's life as a prostitute, controlled by her pimp Lester Grimes.

[20][64] The comic was written by Judge Dredd Megazine editor Matt Smith, drawn by 2000 AD artist Henry Flint and was released on 5 September 2012.

[73] In North America, pre-release tracking estimated that the film would gross between $8 and $10 million during its opening weekend based on its adult rating and the poor reputation of the 1995 adaptation.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Fueled by bombastic violence and impressive special effects, rooted in self-satire and deadpan humor, Dredd 3D does a remarkable job of capturing its source material's gritty spirit.

[93] Variety's Geoff Berkshire wrote the actor "does a fine job embodying the more mythic qualities of Dredd as an upright law enforcer no lowlife would want to confront".

"[94] The New Statesman's Laura Sneddon noted that Dredd passed the Bechdel test, lacking in sexism or misogyny and positively portraying female characters who are no weaker, more sexualised or shown less than their male counterparts.

Sneddon described Anderson as repeatedly shown to have power over men who underestimate her, while Ma-Ma displays more intelligence and sadism than any of her male gang members, and neither woman interacts with the other on the basis of their gender.

Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times called it "a clunk-headed action picture" that "simply becomes a monotonous series of bad-guy confrontations".

[96] Frank Lovece of Newsday described it as a "soullessly gritty" film, which apart from one believable scene involving Thirlby, is "all tough-guy talk and humorless cynicism".

Overall Dalton said, "[p]itched at the right level to please original fans, but still slick and accessible enough to attract new ones, [Dredd] feels like a smart and muscular addition to the sci-fi action genre.

[89] Dalton said the film "constantly impresses on a visual level, with a gritty style more akin to cult hits like District 9 or 28 Days Later than to standard Hollywood comic-book blockbusters."

[113] Sales spiked in the United Kingdom in June 2013, following a reported rumour that it could influence DNA Films' decision to pursue a sequel.