The Predator franchise has grown plenty, but the end is nowhere in sight — if Prey director Dan Trachtenberg can help it, that is. Following the release of the Predator: Killer of Killers animated anthology and the upcoming theatrical premiere of Predator: Badlands, the filmmaker shared with SFX magazine that he “sort of rushed” developing both projects, and offered a tease of the franchise’s future.
“After Prey came out, and I started thinking about sequel stuff, there were three ideas that I had. Killers is one, Badlands is two and the third one is something else,” said Trachtenberg. “The reason why I felt possessed to make them and sort of why I rushed – I did two at once because I could do, I could multitask with animation – was because I was so eager to get to the third thing.”
“There’s a lot of cool ideas out there and none of them are just like, ‘Oh, we have to say the next part of this story because it was successful.’ All of it is like, ‘Whoa, no one has done that in sci-fi. No one has done that in Predator. No one’s done that with the creature,’ all of those ideas are generated from that instinct. So, yeah, there is definitely a third thing that I’d love to get to when Badlands is finished.”
Naturally, details are being tightly kept under lock and key, but there’s Predator: Badlands to look forward to in the meantime. Releasing on 7 November, the live-action film stars Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi and Elle Fanning as young Predator Dek and a synthetic called Thia, respectively, who become an unlikely pairing after Dek finds himself on a remote planet in the future. The trailer has also fuelled speculation of a return to the Alien crossover universe, sparking excitement with a flash of Weyland-Yutani branding in Thia’s eyes and glimpses of corporate vehicles.
As for Killer of Killers, it hit Hulu and Disney+ (outside of the U.S.) on 6 June, featuring a trio of strong-willed fighters from three very different time periods face off against the titular Yautja.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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