Even though the Predator franchise has been inextricably linked with Alien for the last 30 years, it’s got a lot more in common with Terminator when you think about it.
Whereas the Xenomorphs got four canonical films in a row, before Ridley Scott’s prequel duo told another overarching story, the Predator has suffered the same fate as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 by being consistently rebooted without managing to launch a sustained multi-film series.
That could all change with Dan Trachtenberg’s latest effort, though, which has officially been titled Skull. Obviously, that’s hardly earth-shattering news when a project known as Skulls entered development with Trachtenberg back at the helm back in late 2019, long before anybody knew it was a reinvention of the sci-fi icons.
Don’t rule out the marketing team slapping it with some inane branding to ensure audiences know it’s part of the mythology, either, but for the love of god don’t call it Skull: Predator Origins or something along those lines. We’ve also been hearing the Comanche angle for a while, and without giving too much away, producer John Davis confirmed a female protagonist and compared the movie to The Revenant.
Skull will act as an origin story for the franchise, with the plot revolving around the very first visit one of the mandibled extra-terrestrials made to Earth, and given that we’re expecting the hero to emerge victorious at the end and establish dominance, it could establish why they’re so determined to keep coming back to our planet and losing.
A period-set Predator is an enticing angle, especially when we’ve yet to see an entire film completely stripped of human technology, with shooting already roughly 75% complete and shrouded in secrecy, so we’ll be seeing how it all pans out next year.
