Hot off the heels of Predator: Killer of Killers, the brutal animated anthology now streaming on Hulu and Disney+, director Dan Trachtenberg is talking about his next live action film in the franchise, Predator: Badlands, which is going to shake up the franchise in a fun way.
Instead of following a new group of humans being stalked, this story centers on a Yautja named Dek, an outcast from his own kind who ends up being the one running for his life. Talk talking about this aspect of the story, Trachtenberg told GamesRadar+:
“I’ve always been interested in characters trying to prove themselves. The real special of Badlands is that it is not just another Predator movie, and we’re not just doing the thing where you cut to the Predator and it kills people one by one.
“Every chapter [in the series] brings its own special engine to the franchise, and the fun of Badlands is really the inversion of it all—that this time, the Predator is the one being hunted, and he is the one needing to prove himself. Badlands is thematically linked to the entire franchise in that way.”
The Predator franchise has always thrived on a core idea… survival of the fittest, but Badlands asks what happens when the apex predator is no longer at the top of the food chain, and what he’s willing to do to climb back.
Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) teams up with a synthetic android named Thia (Elle Fanning), who appears to be a creation of the Weyland-Yutani Corporatio from the Alien universe. Together, the unlikely pair sets out on a journey to find what’s described as “the ultimate adversary,” all while other Predators are tracking Dek down like prey. The hunter has become the hunted.
The script was written by Patrick Aison, with Trachtenberg also on board as producer alongside John Davis, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, and Brent O’Connor.
If you’ve been following Trachtenberg’s journey through this universe, this marks his third time playing in the Predator sandbox. His first, Prey, was a prequel set in 1719 that became Hulu’s biggest hit on launch. Then came Killer of Killers, which takes the franchise into adult animation territory, featuring three different warriors facing off with the galaxy’s deadliest hunter in three differnet periods of time.
But Badlands is a redefining take on the franchise. Instead of repeating the familiar beats, Trachtenberg seems intent on cracking the formula open and seeing what else the franchise can be. The decision to center the story on a Predator character, and an outcast at that, is a very cool, interesting, and unique move for the franchise.
Predator: Badlands hits theaters on November 7, 2025.
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