The Predator franchise has, over the years, given us all kinds of heroes. We got Arnie’s rippling muscles in the original; Danny Glover’s LA cop in the sequel; a gaggle of reprobates in Predators; and, most recently, Amber Midthunder’s Comanche warrior Naru in Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey. But for his next Predator outing, Trachtenberg has something very different planned. 2025 will see the release of Predator: Badlands (as well as another film in the franchise that he shot simultaneously in secret), which isn’t exactly a follow-up to Prey but a future-set tale taking place on an alien planet. And, most importantly, it brings a very different kind of Predator protagonist: the Predator itself.
“The creature is front and centre, leading the charge,” Trachtenberg grins, speaking to Empire in the Andor Season 2 issue. “He’s still badass, but there’s something there that touches you emotionally, too. Creating a character you connect with, but are also super-intimidated by, has been challenging. But exciting.” The idea, he says, came from a desire to “find another essential piece of cinema that does what Prey did spiritually — pushing the franchise’s boundaries, letting us root for a hero we rarely get to root for — but in a different way. And that transformed into this big idea of rooting for the Predator.” Finally, the ugly mother-effer’s day has come.
Set in an alien planet? Does that mean more aliens? If it contribute to an origin story or expand the lore, I am all in. We need a revival in terms of lore.
My impression is it’s a human colony, so it might not be adding much more back story than we already have but it might be the kind of world they were trying to get to in Romulus and/or a fully terraformed world (the end process we saw the start of in the first two Alien films). So the future setting could help tie the two universes together. I suspect they’ll have offered Trachtenberg an Alien film if he wants it but an Alien vs Predator one would also make sense. I suppose this could be a stealth one as a Xenomorph would definitely put the Predator on the back foot. I seem to recall an early AvP Dark Horse Comic set on a farm on a colony world which worked well. However, we’ll have to wait and see.