Prey Director Reveals His Philosophy for Potential Predator Sequels (Exclusive)

With Prey, the Predator franchise got back to basics. The 2022 release not only dialed things back to hundreds of years in the past, but Prey made sure that the main encounter with the Predator was more in line with the face-to-face battle of the original movie. This approach was one of the many things that fans responded to in a big way, but with success also comes consideration of the future, and more sequels. No official announcement has been made about Prey 2, but the discussion is clearly ongoing, especially from fans, and considering the approach to this movie it makes you wonder how a sequel could possibly make it work without falling into the trap of going too big. 

ComicBook.com sat down with Prey director Dan Trachtenberg to talk about the movie's upcoming 4K release and we got the chance to pick his brain on what he's thinking when it comes to a potential sequel. We brought all this up, that Prey's simpler nature compared to the likes of Predators and The Predator, was what made it so special; but success in Hollywood means sequel talks have to happen, so how do you follow that up without falling into the same traps that other sequels fall into? Here's what Trachtenberg said:

"You finally asked the right question. For everyone who's been asking me about sequels, it's like, that is the thing, is that oftentimes someone does a cool thing and the sequel is just....and then the next part, and then it's like, oh, well then that's just following up the cool. That isn't what that thing was. And so yes, in thinking about what sequels could be, the primary conversation was and always will be, what we can do that is also special, that hasn't happened yet. Not just for the Predator franchise, but for this kind of genre in particular. Can we still be doing something cool?"

In our conversation Trachtenberg followed this up by adding how that philosophy informed his approach to Prey, adding: "A thing I say quite a bit in the development phase is make sure that everything is only this movie, only this movie can we get this kind of scene or that kind of sequence. Don't want to have a scene in here that's like, oh, that could have been in the other Predator movies, or that could have been this Marvel film or this Star Wars. Only in this movie can you get this kind of thing." For Prey, one of those moments was the Predator fighting a bear and being fully revealed by its blood pouring over the alien hunter. 

Prey will be available on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD October 3, with over two hours of all-new bonus features.