Predator: Badlands director explains why the upcoming sci-fi movie is an "inversion" of the franchise: "This time, the Predator is the one being hunted"

Predator lovers are eating good this year. Not only has the critically acclaimed animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers just dropped on Hulu and Disney Plus, but Predator: Badlands, a live-action sequel, releases in cinemas later this year.

As revealed in the much-talked-about teaser trailer, Badlands centres on an outcast member of the deadly Yautja species fighting his own after allying himself with an android, Thia, played by Elle Fanning and seemingly created by Weyland-Yutani (from the Alien movies). It's something of a curveball scenario, one of the fearsome Predators now being a main protagonist, hunted by his kind – and that's exactly how director Dan Trachtenberg likes it.

"I've always been interested in characters trying to prove themselves," he tells GamesRadar+. "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."

Little else is known about Predator: Badlands other than the outcast Yautja is named Dek and is played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. Luckily, Predator: Killer of Killers offers more than enough to chew on while we await that movie's release in November. In fact, Trachtenberg secretly made Killer of Killers at the same time as Badlands, spending his days working on the live-action set and every other waking minute on calls with co-director Joshua Wassung, helping craft the animation's exquisite set-pieces.

The results speak for themselves; in our Predator: Killer of Killers review, GamesRadar+ has awarded the film, which tells three different stories set over three different historical eras, a coveted five stars, with our reviewer calling it "an absolute must-watch."

Killer of Killers introduces various Predator designs, the filmmakers working with Alec Gillis – who worked on the original movie's special effects – to create the new looks. "Alec Gillis had mountains of designs over the years from various films, he's an expert in that way," Wassung says. "He brought his team to it, and they were like, 'Alright, we're going to be unleashed.'"

However, although the movie is animated, meaning that the team's imaginations could go wild, especially considering they no longer had to fit a real human in the Predator suit, they still treated it as they would any live-action movie. "They just produced all these incredible options," Wassung continues. "We talked with [Gillis] back and forth, and we started gravitating towards one that really spoke to us, that seemed a natural fit to their respective eras. And then we brought in our art department to, like, 'Okay, let's push the designs.'"

The animators had to work out how these creatures would move, how heavy they were, how high they could jump, and really understand the rules of what they could do. "I mean, it's a deep dive, but honestly, that whole thing is just so fun,"Wassung adds.

Predator: Killer of Killers is out now on Hulu and Disney Plus. Predator: Badlands reaches cinemas November 7.

In the meantime, check out our guide to all of 2025's most exciting upcoming movies for everything else that's in store.