‘Prey’ star explains how he was sold on playing a huge alien hunter

Dane DiLiegro said that the catalyst for his new Predator were the keywords “feral,” “animalistic,” “wild,” and “primal.”

Those are what director Dan Trachtenberg used to inform DiLiegro’s portrayal of the iconic, dreads-wearing and dread-causing alien in Prey. This installment takes the Predator to the Comanche Nation in 1719, so the primeval setting required a primeval redesign of the ornery antagonist. As DiLiegro told Screen Rant, Predator went from a clunky wrestler to a sleek warrior:

“I knew we were kind of departing from the stand-up, humanoid, WWF wrestler. Dan [Trachtenberg] did not want that 1987 wrestler-style Predator, he wanted something dynamic, he wanted something lean, that was more violent and quicker.”

He went on to describe the hard work that the effects team put into the new design:

“They really had their hands full, because now they have to design a suit that can stand up to the physicality in the way this character can move. That’s a tricky design, because the more you go into that movement-dynamic character, the more the suit has to articulate and there’s folds, you you have to prevent from happening. Things that we shot in the middle of day, in broad daylight, it’s very easy for things to be exposed. And the way they put the suit together with newer technologies today, compared to in the past, it was a synergy of a lot of creativity and technology. You saw the final result; it looks great.”

You can see it for yourself in Prey, which is streaming on Hulu in the United States and on Disney Plus and Star Plus in other regions.