The first Predator was unleashed on audiences in 1987, quickly becoming a classic adventure in the realm of horror, sci-fi, and action, which pits Arnold Schwarzenegger and a team of mercenaries against an otherworldly hunter. In the decades since, the franchise has evolved in a number of ways, though each expansion has fallen short of the effectiveness of that debut entry. In 2022, however, Dan Trachtenberg released Prey, which brought a version of the Yautja creature back to 1719, where it faced off with a group of Comanche warriors. The movie was a hit with audiences and critics alike, allowing Trachtenberg to develop the upcoming Predator: Badlands and the animated Predator: Killer of Killers.
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“I had three very cool ideas. One of them, the first one, the one I was the most excited about at the time, was Badlands. But then there was this other thing, that was Prey, [that] was really cool,” Trachtenberg recalled about his time with the franchise during press event ComicBook attended. “We got to put the Predator in these different time periods and tell that story. I think the thing that made Prey special, though, wasn’t just Predator in a different time period, it was that the story we were telling was made better by the story of the Predator, and I didn’t want to just throw them into a different time period. I really wanted to figure out, if we were to do that kind of thing again, how could it be special? And what’s the kind of story we could tell that could be equally badass and awesome, but also emotional and thematic and character-oriented?”
Predator: Killer of Killers is described, “The anthology story follows three of the fiercest warriors in human history: a Viking raider guiding her young son on a bloody quest for revenge, a ninja in feudal Japan who turns against his Samurai brother in a brutal battle for succession, and a WWII pilot who takes to the sky to investigate an otherworldly threat to the Allied cause. But while all these warriors are killers in their own right, they are merely prey for their new opponent – the ultimate killer of killers.”
Predator: Badlands, which stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is set in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi), outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Fanning) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary. The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg and produced by John Davis, Dan Trachtenberg, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, and Brent O’Connor.
[RELATED – First Predator: Badlands Teaser Puts the Iconic Hunter in the Spotlight]
“In thinking about the different time periods, I honed in on the idea of, what if we made an animated movie where we could express ourselves in a way that we don’t get to see?” Trachtenberg expressed. “We’ve now had all these Predator movies and we’re doing this one that’s crazy different, but still with all the stuff … The other side of the coin that I love in Predator movies is that hard-R, crazy carnage. Wouldn’t it be cool to see that in a different medium? So we made this movie, Killer of Killers, at the exact same time, stupidly, but awesomely.”
When asked if there were more ideas for animated movies, the filmmaker confirmed, “Certainly. I’m sure you guys see a cool movie and [say], ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if…?’ That [thinking] doesn’t turn off for me. So there’s tons of cool things. We’ll see if we get to make it. People have to like it. But it certainly wasn’t made … I guess the thing that we’re always trying to say is it’s not made [to feel] like it’s just Act One of something larger. I think that’s what we all mean when we say … Christopher Nolan would always say to make it as if it’s the only one. It’s really because you don’t want to feel like you were shortchanged by the experience and it was incomplete. These are very much, for me, I won’t sleep at night if I don’t feel like I really communicated with exactly all that I wanted to with both of these movies. So we’re really throwing all our hearts out there.”
Predator: Killer of Killers hits Hulu on June 6th. Predator: Badlands arrives in theaters on November 7th.
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