‘Predator’ Director Debunks Rumors, Reveals Trailer Release Date

Shane Black’s The Predator has been swallowed up by the Internet rumor mill as of late, mostly because there’s been little to no promotional material for it to speak. That absence has left a lot of confusion and speculation about what this new Predator is all about, and what has been going on with production. When some angry/concerned fans recently came at Black on social media, the filmmaker finally came out to knock down some of those rumors, once and for all:

That Twitter exchange clears up two very important points:

1. This new Predator is a sequel set 30 years after the events of the first film. It’s not a reboot like Predators, or a remake, as some people clearly still think it is. Let’s all get on the same page about that one.
2. We’re getting a trailer in the next few weeks, sometime. April will be the launchpad for a lot of big movies, so it’s no surprise Predator would be in the lineup of trailers.

Filming on The Predator wrapped back in June of last year, but we’ve heard little to nothing official about it, since then. The poster for the film seems to tease the modern urban/suburban setting that has been reported. The cast includes Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), and Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones) as elite military types hunting the Predator; Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us), and Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse) as government and scientist types investigating the Predator race; a young autistic boy (Jacob Tremblay) who is a language prodigy; the boy’s mother (Yvonne Strahovski); and some assorted supporting characters (Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane) who may end up being Predator meat.

Here’s what Jane recently revealed about the story:

“We play these veterans from like Afghanistan, Iraq war or whatever. But we’re all f—ing crazy so we go to the VA hospital to get our meds… we’re in group therapy and of course, somebody flips out… and we all get arrested and get thrown onto the bus to go down to the hospital and they throw this other guy on the bus too… And he’s a guy they’ve actually marked to kill him because he’s seen a UFO, he’s seen the Predator ships come down so they lock him up and throw him in with us lunatics… They’re going to take that bus, drive it down to a ditch and shoot us all just to get rid of this one guy. But, of course, we take the bus over and we’re all like ‘f–k that man, let’s go kill these f–king Predators ourselves’ and we’re just crazy enough to believe that this guy really did see a UFO and there’s these aliens out there.”

Right now, there are a lot of fans who seem to be tiring of both the Predator and Alien franchises, as both of these pioneering ’80s sci-fi horror/sci-fi/action films have failed to launch big successful reboots in the modern age. Not even the combination of the two franchises (AVP) could muster the sort of acclaim studios were hoping for. That leaves Shane Black‘s Predator facing a steep uphill climb – so hopefully, that first teaser will erase a lot of fan skepticism, and capture some mainstream attention. But with newer and more novel horror films springing up (see: A Quiet Place this week), the genre competition has only gotten more fierce.

The Predator will be in theaters (in 3D) on September 14th.