The $75 Million Sci-Fi Movie Stallone Calls a "Crash and Burn"

He gave us Rocky and Rambo, sure — but he also gave us Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. And in Stallone's own words, there's one movie he'd erase from existence if he could: Judge Dredd.

Released in 1995, Judge Dredd was Stallone's first crack at a comic book property. It came with a $75 million budget, cutting-edge effects, and a character with a rabid fanbase. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything.

Originally, the project had Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Scott attached. They bailed. Stallone stepped in, and a young British director, Danny Cannon, was handed the reins. From there, things spiraled. The final product was a tonal mess, the fanbase revolted when Dredd took off his helmet (which is kind of his whole thing), and the movie bombed with both critics and diehards.

In 2006, Stallone admitted the problems ran deep:

"From what I recall, the whole project was troubled from the beginning. The philosophy of the film was not set in stone — by that, I mean, 'Is this going to be a serious drama or with comic overtones' like other science fiction films that were successful?"

He called it "a real missed opportunity," even though he couldn't quite decide what it should've been. In one interview, he said it should've been funnier. In another, he pitched it as a dark, nihilistic future story. Either way, he wasn't happy.

Stallone also blamed the shift in action filmmaking — from physical grit to digital spectacle. He told Film Threat:

"Special effects and technology became extremely important, and action films went from being Lawrence of Arabia to these extraordinary special effects events… When I left what I felt good at… and moved on to the technological films, like Judge Dredd, that's not me. And I know, when films of mine don't work, why they don't work: because that's not me. And then, of course, we crash and burn."

Judge Dredd made about $113 million worldwide — not a total financial disaster, but far from what you'd expect given the hype and the budget. Stallone never touched the character again, and Dredd was eventually rebooted in 2012 without him (and with the helmet firmly on).

In the end, it wasn't the costume, or the effects, or the fan backlash that made Stallone hate the movie. It was the realization that he was chasing a trend, not playing to his strengths — and the result was a film that felt like everyone was trying to make something different, and no one was steering the ship.