Despite appearing in six movies since 1987 and becoming one of the most iconic figures in sci-fi cinema, the Predator has never shown up in a direct sequel. Predator 2 was only tenuously connected to John McTiernan’s original, the two Alien crossovers told unrelated stories with an entirely different cast and crew, Nimrod Antal’s Predators took the action off-world and Shane Black’s The Predator was caught somewhere between a continuation and a reboot.
The last effort may have been the highest-grossing standalone Predator movie ever, but a box office haul of $160 million on a budget of $88 million was well below the numbers the studio were expecting, and reviews weren’t particularly kind, either. And while the dreadlocked aliens don’t seem like the type of property that Disney would be interested in revisiting, 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg has now been hired to take the reins of a new installment under the 20th Century Studios banner that will wipe the slate clean once again.
The script is set to be penned by Patrick Aison, who doesn’t have an extensive list of credits after writing solitary episodes of mystery series Wayward Pines, MMA drama Kingdom and espionage shows Jack Ryan and Treadstone, while the new Predator will mark Trachtenberg’s second feature film behind the camera, although he has directed one episode each of Black Mirror and The Boys.
That’s a relatively untested combination for rebooting the sci-fi series yet again, so the duo must have put quite the pitch together in order to convince the studio that another Predator movie was worth making. There are no plot or casting details yet, but fingers crossed that this will be the one that finally convinces Arnold Schwarzenegger to return as Dutch.
