‘The Predator’ Director Explains Why the Film Needed Major Reshoots

It’s safe to say that 20th Century Fox has major plans in place for The Predator and their hopes to revitalize the franchise, so much so that they delayed the film’s release twice to accommodate director Shane Black.

With those major changes in the form of reshoots, fans have questions about the film’s status ahead of the film’s premiere in September. So Black shed some light on the status of the film, revealing just what’s going on with his take on the alien hunters.

“The first time we shot the third act it was daytime,” Black said to Empire Magazine. “It’s all this spooky stuff but then it’s bright sunlight. It just didn’t work. So I said ‘Ummm, can we do this again at night?’”

Changing the time of day wasn’t the only major change, as they also moved the setting for the film’s climax to a forest.

The movie will also debut a brand new species of Predator, which they are dubbing the Ultimate Predator. Black called the new version of the skilled killer is “bigger, meaner and nasty as hell.”

“Ten feet tall and midnight black, bristling with spines, skin thickened with chitinous organic armour – the product of harvesting DNA from the deadliest creatures on every world it has hunted,” Black said. “The ultimate expression of Predator dominance. It is, it’s fair to say, one giant, ugly motherfucker.”

Given the creatures appearance in various films, including the crossover franchise with Aliens, has worked to dull the mystique surrounding the alien race.

“The challenge became to make it frightening,” Black said. “`Cause upon that hinged everything — whether you bought our heroes going up against him and felt a real threat for them. We had to invent a scenario in which the Predators were mysterious and scary again.”

Black previously gave details about the Ultimate Predators to EW, talking about how the Ultimate Predator will help him achieve his goal in the movie.

“If the [ultimate] predator was to be an amalgam of, not just an ordinary predator, but also a collection of traits garnered from the various most powerful species that they’ve hunted, then you basically would have one that is stronger, faster, and smarter,” Black said. “We finally got an image that we liked, which captures this very canny, very cunning, and effortlessly powerful, savage predator. One of the only quibbles that I’ve had with some of the past predators is that, if you’re not careful, it can look like a guy in a football suit; big, bulky guy just stomping around. I wanted a certain more graceful, more light, more athletic quality, literally like a predator. If you watch a cheetah, it’s not clunky.”

The Predator premieres in theaters on September 14th.