Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg has revealed that his first idea for the new movie involved a period setting – and Nazi hunting.
"The very first nugget of the idea was, what if the Predator wins?" Trachtenberg told The Direct. "And I just really didn't want it to be a slasher movie where the slasher wins, I really wanted you to root for the guy, and then in rooting for it, I was like, 'Well, I guess he could be, like, set in World War 2, and he's kicking Nazi butt or something.'
"But even then, I felt like that's not really a special new movie. And then it became, 'Wait a second, what if he's really the protagonist of his own story, and I get people to really root for him on his own journey, his own adventure.'"
Instead, Badlands is set in the far future. After the movie's Yautja protagonist, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), is outcast from his clan, he embarks on a mission to prove himself, where he reluctantly teams up with a Weyland-Yutani synth named Thia (Elle Fanning).
Although this is Trachtenberg's third installment in the franchise, Predator: Badlands is a standalone movie and doesn't connect to 2022's Prey or 2025's animated Predator: Killer of Killers – although there are some subtle nods to the Alien franchise.
"It just felt, to me, like there was a way to include things in cinematic universes that are already spiritually connected, and involve them in one story, in one movie," Trachtenberg recently told GamesRadar+. "That's cooler than it being like, 'It's the big thing versus the big thing from the franchise!'"
Predator: Badlands is out now in theaters. For more on the film, check out our Predator: Badlands review, or settle in for a movie marathon with our guide to watching the Predator movies in order.
