Predator fans were left wondering what’s next from the franchise after director Dan Trachtenberg was confirmed to be taking on a new movie inspired by Sleeping Beauty.
Trachtenberg, who is credited with successfully reviving the Predator franchise with the superb Prey in 2022, the well-received animated movie Predator: Killer of Killers, and last year’s Predator: Badlands, is in early development on a Sleeping Beauty-inspired movie for Disney that will take the classic story in a new direction, Deadline said. He’s also reportedly in pre-production on a secret new movie for Paramount. Neither movie has a timeline for release.
Where does this leave Predator? Killer of Killers and Badlands both left the door open to sequels. Indeed, Badlands set up a follow-up with a cliffhanger that got fans speculating about what might happen next. And let’s not forget the extended cut of Killer of Killers features Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character Dutch and Danny Glover’s character Mike Harrigan on ice, waiting to be warmed up for some future Predator movie or TV series.
The PG-13 Badlands is officially the highest-grossing Predator movie of all-time, not accounting for inflation, earning $183 million worldwide. But one of the lingering questions following the movie’s theatrical release was whether it had done enough business at the box office to convince Disney to invest in a sequel.
After Badlands failed to cross the $200 million mark, and factoring in production and marketing costs as well as the cut of revenue theaters take from ticket sales, a Badlands sequel always felt like it was on a knife edge. Check out IGN’s Predator: Badlands Ending Explained to find out what’s next for the series, assuming Trachtenberg gets to continue making Predator movies.
Predator began with 1987’s much-loved Predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Badlands is a very different film; less sci-fi horror, more mainstream sci-fi action. For the first time ever the Predator is the protagonist, with a Yautja called Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) out to prove himself to his father by killing a monster on a death planet. Along the way, he meets a Weyland-Yutani synth called Thia, played by Elle Fanning, in an Alien / Predator crossover.
Ahead of Badlands’ release, Trachtenberg said it was his intention that each of his Predator movies was “a complete thought,” having learnt a valuable lesson from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“It can all go out the door once we start putting pen to paper on stuff, but I’ve looked as far as I could to feel comfortable about what I’m doing,” Trachtenberg told Variety. “Every movie is a complete thought, not that much unlike the early Marvel stuff before the first Avengers movie, where it’s like, those are great movies, and lo and behold, we’re actually setting up that things could come together in a delicious way. But they weren’t like, ‘See how everything’s interconnected like crazy all of a sudden!’ So I’m trying to learn that lesson and make sure that any of these movies that we do are awesome ideas for movies on their own.”
Variety then pressed Trachtenberg on the possible of tying all his threads together to form an Avengers-style payoff, since be brought the movie up. “It’s hard,” he responded. “It’s fun to geek out and think, ‘Oh my god, wouldn’t it be cool if…,’ even on a movie that you’d never expect that to happen in. But it’s only cool if the journey there is equally worth taking.”
In March, the 79-year-old Schwarzenegger said 20th Century Studios was developing Conan 3, Commando 2, and a new Predator movie, with an eye for him to star in all three. The actor revealed he’d been in talks with Trachtenberg about reprising the role of Dutch from 1987’s Predator, but we haven’t heard anything since.
