Good news for everyone — and there were plenty of us – who thought that 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg did a fantastic job with 2022’s Prey, producing the best Predator movie in many a year. He’s back on the hunt for a new movie set in the extraterrestrial tracker universe called Badlands.
Not planned as a sequel to Prey (which, as you’ll recall, saw Amber Midthunder as a young Comanche woman in 1719 who had to deal with one of the toothy hunters), the new film is being largely shrouded by an invisibility cloak, but The Hollywood Reporter has heard that it’ll be set in the future and will once more feature a female lead. And despite it not being a direct follow-up, a connection to Prey would not be out of the question.
Trachtenberg once more cooked up the story with the previous film’s writer Patrick Aison, with Aison going on to write the script. It’s reportedly far enough along for the cameras to start rolling in July.
That’s just one Predator-connected project that Disney (via its 20th Century Studios arm) is looking to develop, with Trachtenberg overseeing others at different stages. The success of Prey, which set viewing records for US streaming service Hulu (and Disney+ here), has led to plenty of renewed interest in the creature and with luck, Badlands will get a proper shot at a cinematic release.