Rewind, for a minute, back to last Christmas. That's when we first learned that the long-mooted plans to have another stab at bringing Judge Dredd back to the big screen were moving ahead. Dredd, of course, was the subject of a debatable 1995 movie, starring Sylvester Stallone and directed by Danny Cannon (now best known for lots of CSI episodes).

For a long time, it was assumed that the commercial and critical reaction to the Dredd movie had killed the chances of Ol' Stoney Face returning to the big screen. But last December, it was announced on the 2000AD forums that Rebellion and 2000AD were teaming up with Danny Boyle's DNA Films (who, in turn, is covered by a deal with Fox Searchlight) to give Dredd a second shot at cinematic stardom. Our original story on the news can be found here.

As is usually the drill, of course, things then went quiet. That was until comics artist Jock dropped a small single comment on his Twitter feed: "working through script visuals for JUDGE DREDD movie. Alex Garland writes a great script."

Now how's that for a piece of news?

Alex Garland is a long time Danny Boyle collaborator, of course, ever since the director brought The Beach to the big screen in 2000. Garland has since gone on to write the screenplays of both Sunshine and 28 Days Later for Boyle, and this is, to my knowledge anyway, the first word that he's been involved in the script for Judge Dredd. In fact, from the tone of that Tweet, it reads as if a screenplay for the film (or at least a draft of it) has been written. Or am I just reading too much into that?

If the project, however, is at some form of visualisation stage, it does open up questions as to how close Judge Dredd is to finding a director. Could Boyle himself be tempted? He's shown just how far he can stretch a modest budget with his underappreciated sci-fi flick Sunshine, and surely must be a major candidate (even though he ruled himself out of the project at the start of the year - but still...).

Slashfilm, incidentally, has some concept art from Jock that emerged earlier this year for the new Dredd movie. You can find its post here.

The current plan is for the Judge Dredd movie to be in cinemas for 2012, but we wouldn't expect further details on it for a while yet.

See also:

• Top 10 contenders to play Judge Dredd