Everything We Know About Predator: Badlands

Back in 2022, 20th Century Studios, director Dan Trachtenberg, and the Hulu streaming service brought the world a new addition to the Predator franchise, the 1719-set Prey – a film that went over so well, Tranchtenberg was given the opportunity to continue expanding the Predator series. In February of 2024, it was announced that he was moving forward with a project called Predator: Badlands, which is now aiming for a November 7, 2025 theatrical release. With more details on the new film starting to emerge, we figured this was the right time to put together a list of Everything We Know About Predator: Badlands:

PREY CREATIVE TEAM

Dan Trachtenberg directed Predator: Badlands from a screenplay he wrote with his Prey collaborator Patrick Aison – and they crafted a very different sort of story this time around. The studio has revealed that the film is set in the future on a remote planet, telling the story of a young Predator, outcast from his clan, who finds an unlikely ally in a synthetic being called Thia and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.

According to a casting call, the film had the following logline: A groundbreaking film in which one of the two main storylines delves into the intricate bond of two very different sisters, their familial ties are put to the ultimate test as they pursue divergent paths and missions. The casting call was searching for a lead actress who could take on the dual role of twin sisters Thia and Tessa: This casting is for a dual character, and describes both characters. Character identifies as female or non-binary, open ethnicity, mid 20s – mid 40s. Thia has spent most of her life in a laboratory and is now embarking on her first big adventure in the world. She is incredibly smart, witty, enthusiastic, and unflappable. She has an innate disregard for danger, not because she’s fearless, but simply because she’s naive. Strong comedy chops required. // The other sister, Tessa, has a militant intensity when it comes to achieving her family’s goals and mission objectives. She will not let anything get in her way, not even her twin sister. So, unless one of these characters is human and the other is a synthetic made in her image, it looks like we have identical synthetic characters in this film. The casting call noted the physical requirements of the role: “Must be comfortable training for heavy action/combat, must also be comfortable wearing prosthetics/heavy makeup, and MUST be 5’8” or shorter.” A teaser trailer revealed that Thia was created by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, tying this film to the Alien franchise.

Trachtenberg produced Predator: Badlands alongside John Davis, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, and Brent O’Connor. While O’Connor is new to the Predator franchise (but was an executive producer on Alien: Romulus), Davis, Toberoff, and Rosenblatt were also involved with Prey – in fact, John Davis has produced every Predator movie, going back to the 1987 original.

CAST

Elle Fanning was cast in the dual roles of Thia and Tessa, even though she’s not 5’8″ or shorter. Fanning is reportedly 5’9″. Close enough. Her previous credits include Super 8, Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Trumbo, The Neon Demon, Mary Shelley, The Girl from Plainville, The Great, and A Complete Unknown. Trachtenberg has said that Thia’s story is similar to the main Predator’s situation. “[Her] story [has the same roots but] is a bit different thematically, and starts to go into a different branch of proving oneself.“

The only other cast member to be confirmed as of this writing is Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who has been in Jonah, The Panthers, Upright, Far North, and Red, White & Brass. Schuster-Koloamatangi did the in-costume and motion-capture performances that bring the film’s primary Predator, known as Dek, to life on the screen. Speaking with ComicBook.com, Trachtenberg said, “Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is the actor’s name. We had a very specific casting for Dek. We thought we would want a stunt guy and this was a real opportunity, because all the other Predators need to be like seven-foot-six. It’s very specific people that aren’t often trained stuntmen. They happen to be that size and they decide to get into this business. [Prey star] Dane [DiLiegro] did want to be in the business, but he also was an ex-basketball player, he was the one who played the feral in Prey. Here, it was the first time I was like, ‘Oh, we can get a proper stunt guy to be the guy who can move in the ways…’ And at one of our castings, we had a number of stunt guys and then this dude Dimitrius came up and the way he moved just had a great swashbuckle to it. He just was so cool. We set up a little physical obstacle course. That’s how we cast him. Then he did some dramatic stuff from the movie and it was awesome. I was not at all prepared for what he actually does, it’s so … I could not believe, how did we luck into this guy? It’s crazy that we found him.“

THE PREDATOR IS THE HERO

Finding just the right performer to play Dek was incredibly important because, as Trachtenberg revealed to Empire, the Predator is the protagonist in this story. He said, “The creature is front and center, leading the charge. He’s still badass, but there’s something there that touches you emotionally, too. Creating a character you connect with, but are also super-intimidated by, has been challenging. But exciting.” The idea for Predator: Badlands came from Trachtenberg’s desire to “find another essential piece of cinema that does what Prey did spiritually — pushing the franchise’s boundaries, letting us root for a hero we rarely get to root for — but in a different way. And that transformed into this big idea of rooting for the Predator.”

The focus on Dek is why the Predator’s face is not entirely practical in this film, but instead is a digital effect provided by Wētā Workshop. “This movie, you really wanted people to connect with Dek. Unfortunately, the rotors that go inside the mask that is usually adorned for the Predator not only affects all the physicality of the creature, so it makes people move a certain way, but also it just does not have the articulation to bring people in and connect to a creature. We were trying to do this thing of, we want you to bond with a horrific-looking creature. The methodology was a guy in a suit, and you’re seeing suit, the whole thing, other than his face. The face is all digital.“

This is where the motion-capture element of Schuster-Koloamatangi’s performance comes in, as there were dots placed on his face to help guide how the Predator’s face should be animated.

YAUTJA PRIME

Predator: Badlands was filmed in locations throughout New Zealand, with the country standing in for the Predator home planet of Yautja Prime. For the first time, we’re getting a story set on the world these creatures come from – and since it’s a Yautja Prime story, the filmmakers decided to create an official language for the Predators. Trachtenberg told ComicBook.com, “We’re on Yautja Prime, what is known as Yautja Prime mainly from extended universe stuff. There’s a lot in this movie that is more from the extended universe than is from things that are properly in the movie. I should mention the language. We, insanely, decided to really treat that properly and we reached out to the guy who does the Na’vi language [in Avatar], who was very occupied and recommended his mentee. We did it the way that, for The Lord of the Rings, you would do Elvish, for Game of Thrones, you do Dothraki. Except for those, there’s more precedent. For us, there’s very little. As we discovered, with him being a language expert, and frankly, actually working with [Predator special effects artist] Alec Gillis, all the stuff that you’ve seen in other Predator movies is complete garbage. There’s no sense of it. People from the Internet have tried to make sense of it, but none of it was made with intention. So we decided to make it with intention and we completely developed the language, so everything they’re speaking has actual rules and structure and all that stuff. And written as well as verbal. Very early on, we just did explorations, concept art explorations of what Yautja could be. I wanted to be very careful in making this, that I not fall into a trap that is making something that is more lore-focused than story-focused. I think, lots of times, when people do more in a franchise, there’s a tendency to really go whole hog into the Senate trading committees and whatever. I thought we should just have a little sliver of that, but not let the movie be like, there could be some expectation when people hear the premise that the movie is going to be all about the inner workings of the Yautja culture and that’s not — we wanted to still make it feel genre, feel very specific. Really, what it is, it’s an inversion of the premise of now the Predator is on a planet. He’s going to be hunted by things and has to use his guile to figure out stuff. While we were writing, we were doing concept art and things like that to figure out the world-building of it all.“

Schuster-Koloamatangi was able to learn and speak the Yautja language, which is something Trachtenberg wasn’t even able to do.

While figuring out the look and style of the film, Trachtenberg said (as reported by Bloody Disgusting) that he drew inspiration from the likes of Frank Frazetta, Conan the Barbarian, Spartans, The Book of Eli, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Shane, Clint Eastwood westerns, and Terrence Malick films. He also said, “I never thought [the Predator] was Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger. [Predators] had a code [like] hitmen or crime underworld Goodfellas. I felt like there was something cool to explore within that culture that’s different than just adding a bunch of stuff on top of it. It felt like we’re mining [ideas] as opposed to just throwing [more] at the franchise.“

NOT THE ONLY 2025 PREDATOR MOVIE

In the build-up to the release of Predator: Badlands, we’ve learned that this isn’t the only Predator movie we’ll be seeing this year, as Trachtenberg has also directed an animated anthology called Predator: Killer of Killers! The existence of a second film was originally revealed by 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Since this interview was conducted before the Predator: Badlands release date announcement, Asbell was asked if the next Predator movie would get a theatrical release (since Prey was a streaming release). He answered, “Yes and no.” Then, to clarify, he said, “Yes, a Predator movie will have a theatrical. I’ll tell you very simply. After Prey became a success, Dan [Trachtenberg] came back and said he didn’t want to do Prey 2. And we’re like, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he rattled off a bunch of ideas that were really crazy but really cool. We’ve actually done two of them. Two are coming out next year. One I can’t talk about yet, but the other one is the live-action Predator film with Elle Fanning that just wrapped in New Zealand. That’ll be out theatrically sometime next year. … It’s titled Badlands and it is an absolutely bonkers idea. It is a sci-fi thing, but it’s not what everybody thinks it is. And I mean, it’s awesome. It is so nuts. But in Dan, we trust. There’s a second Predator movie that we have different plans for. Dan has actually directed both. There’s a secret Predator movie that will come out before the theatrical one but I can’t say anything about yet.”

We have since found out that Predator: Killer of Killers will be released through the Hulu streaming service on June 6th. Here’s the official synopsis: 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. Trachtenberg crafted the screenplay with Micho Robert Rutare and directed the animated feature alongside Josh Wassung of the animation company The Third Floor.

MARKETING

First unveiled at the CinemaCon event in early April, the first teaser trailer for Predator: Badlands made its way online at the end of April and can be seen right here:

The same day, we also got the first poster for the film:

And that’s everything we know about Predator: Badlands… for now.

The post Everything We Know About Predator: Badlands appeared first on JoBlo.