Kevin Smith Questions Prey Not Getting Theatrical Release: “One of the Best Movie-Going Experiences I’ve Had in a Long Time”

Prey was released on Hulu last weekend, and it is currently up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 92% critics score and a 79% audience score. The movie has already become the best-reviewed movie of the entire Predator franchise. ComicBook.com‘s Spencer Perry gave the movie a 4 out of 5 and called it the “best entry” of the franchise since the original. Fans cannot stop praising the movie, and many have wondered why it did not get a theatrical release. One such fan is Kevin Smith, the Clerks III director who often talks about the latest movies and shows on his podcast with Marc Bernardin, Fatman Beyond. Smith makes it hilariously clear that he’s not trying to bash Hulu’s decision, but rather expresses his curiosity over the choice to skip a theatrical release. 

“If you wanna watch Prey, and f*ck, you should want to watch Prey, that’s on Hulu for some reason. Why did that happen? Look, I’m gonna choose my tone carefully, Mark, so that people aren’t like, ‘Smith tears Hulu a new assh*le.’ So I’m just gonna ask, inquisitively, here… Can I write the clickbait headlines? ‘Smith Inquired Why Did This Not Go To Theatres?’ This movie was like one of the best moviegoing experiences I’ve had in quite some time. I would have imagined this could have totally killed at a movie theatre. Was it always intended to be a Hulu-only release? I’m not criticizing, I don’t want this to read as ‘Smith says Hulu dropped the ball,’ I’m just curious. Because this movie, the production value, and the storytelling was completely cinematic.”

While Prey may not have been released in theatres, it did have a very successful opening on Hulu. In fact, it became the streaming site’s most successful premiere in its history. Not only is the movie available to watch on Hulu, but there is also a special dubbed version in Comanche. 

“We do have like Comanche throughout the film, but when you first choose to watch the film, this will be the first time that the Comanche language and I’m Comanche, by the way, this will be the first time that our language is in a full dub and also subtitled for the whole film,” producer Jhane Myers recently shared with ComicBook.com. “So that’s really important to me and the language component’s very important because this will also be the first time that a film has been completely [dubbed]. You get the option of watching it in Comanche on a brand new film. I know that Navajo has done it twice, with Star Wars, but Star Wars was 30 years old when that came out, Finding Nemo was 20 years old. But here we are, this movie resets a whole lot of paradigms, and one of them is the language component.”

Prey is now streaming on Hulu.