In response to a piece in The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, director Dan Trachtenberg has gotten the greenlight for a second Predator movie, following his straight-to-Hulu horror-thriller Prey. However whereas Prey’s critical success and streaming success as Hulu’s most-watched premiere ever had followers anticipating a Prey 2 would ultimately be made, the report says Trachtenberg’s new Predator movie shall be referred to as Badlands, and shall be set “sometime in the future.”
As obscure as that sounds — and as thrilling because it is likely to be to return to Amber Midthunder’s Great Plains Comanche warrior character Naru in a direct sequel to Prey — the information is an early trace that Trachtenberg is being given the freedom to make the Predator movie he desires to make. And that’s inherently excellent news for followers of the franchise.
“While making [Prey], we really enjoyed conjuring up all the special unique things that we could do, not only just in this franchise but also in this genre, that would be unexpected,” Trachtenberg informed Polygon in late 2023. “Some things happened that are very expected, but some things were very much not. And so all that stuff was and continues to be really fun to think about and explore.”
Picture: Hulu/Everett Assortment
The thought of doing Prey as a interval piece set in the 1700s, reasonably than as a modern-day thriller like the authentic movie, or Shane Black’s 2018 installment The Predator, was seen as a threat. It was an surprising twist for the franchise, one which assured Prey wouldn’t be capable of depend on large weapons or high-tech weaponry for its motion. However that additionally turned out to be the energy of the movie, each as a result of the setting reset the stakes for anybody preventing a Predator, and since it let Trachtenberg reimagine the adversary’s visible design and the fight strategies concerned in dealing with it.
“We wanted to change it more than it’s ever been changed before so it could be a new sight, a new thrill, even for diehard fans of the franchise,” Trachtenberg informed Polygon at the time.
It’s clearly too quickly to know the way Badlands will observe Trachtenberg’s push for innovation and the surprising in the Predator franchise. However on condition that he isn’t returning to the similar designs, setting, and character with this next crack at the sequence, it’s a protected wager that he desires to do one thing particular with it — and that the producers at twentieth Century Studios are trusting his imaginative and prescient reasonably than insisting that he copycat himself by reproducing all the parts that made Prey a hit.
In reality, THR reviews, the studio is “planning a host of Predator projects, with Trachtenberg at the center” — additionally a obscure promise, however one which sounds a bit like he’s grow to be the James Gunn of the Predator franchise. Having one particular person in place to form the sequence, significantly somebody who’s already proven an curiosity in breaking it out of its repetitive mould, appears like a push in the proper direction.
No launch date has been set but for Badlands, however THR says it’s set for manufacturing in summer season 2024, which probably factors at a 2025 launch.
