Predator: Badlands director teases "fun" new Predator movie, as he likens its lead characters to Chewbacca and C-3PO: "There's nothing like a laugh amidst all the violence"

Over the years, Predator fans have come to expect two things from each new movie: blood and carnage. With upcoming sequel Predator: Badlands, though, director Dan Trachtenberg hopes to inject some serious "fun" and humor into the long-running sci-fi horror franchise.

"I've made the comparison that it's like Chewbacca and C-3PO: The Movie. But C-3PO is the nervous Nellie; the fun of Thia is that she is really unflappable," Trachtenberg says in the cover feature of SFX magazine's latest issue, which hits newsstands on September 10. "She is positive under any circumstance. You get a flavor of that personality in the trailer when she pops into frame after slicing and dicing some crazy creatures. That is a really fun character to be stuck with a Predator, a Yautja that is a real hard ass and doesn't really want to talk too much, and is more like Clint Eastwood or Mad Max, or Conan even. So they're made for a really fun pairing and something that we haven't seen in Predator, but also in the Alien franchise."

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Set predominantly on Yautja Prime, the Predators' homeworld that made its onscreen debut in Trachtenberg's acclaimed anthology movie Predator: Killer of Killers, Badlands sees otherworldly hunter Dek (Dimitrius Koloamatangi) align himself with a Weyland-Yutani synth named Thia (Elle Fanning) after he's cast out from his tribe. Together, the twosome set out on a treacherous journey to take on the most fearsome enemy – and prove Dek as an ultimate Predator.

"Having a character like Thia brings more fun to the movie, that I think perfectly balances out all of the intensity," says Trachtenberg, who notes that he grew up on action-comedies like Police Academy, The Naked Gun and True Lies. "There's nothing like a laugh that is a cathartic release amidst all of the intensity and violence and all that stuff. So I love when there's comedy and there's fun in an action thing. I don't respond when something is just pure comedy, for whatever reason, I don't often fall. So it was a joy to make a movie like this where I get to embrace the kind of things that I like in action movies."

Predator: Badlands releases in UK and US theaters on November 7. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which will be available from Wednesday, September 10. Here's the Predator: Badlands cover you need to be looking out for on newsstands below...