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When we meet Dan Trachtenberg over Zoom, the writer-director is feeling pretty good. He seemed pretty jazzed, too, when he spoke to Den of Geek magazine for a cover story last fall. But by his own admission, that was before Predator: Badlands had come out or—for that matter—been completed in the edit. So he had no idea if anyone was going to dig his “a Predator and Weyland-Yutani robot walk into a bar” setup at the time.
“I was terrified,” Trachtenberg admits of his mindset late last year. Yet after he saw folks “were picking up what we’re putting down and stirred by the movie,” a wave of relief descended upon him. And that relief presumably included the box office where Predator: Badlands became the highest-grossing film in the franchise to date, both in terms of opening weekend, with its $40 million debut toppling Alien vs. Predator’s benchmark, as well as Badlands’ worldwide gross of $185 million setting a franchise best.
It’s at least partially for this reason that Paramount Pictures, the studio which first worked with Trachtenberg as a director way back in 2016 on 10 Cloverfield Lane, just signed a first-look deal with the helmer earlier this month. Now Trachtenberg is happy to chat—to a point—about what that future will look like both at Paramount and in the land of Predators and the robots they meet along the way.
“All things are true,” Trachtenberg confirms. “I’m still very much figuring out Predator movie stuff, but also insanely excited about what Paramount and I have discussed.”
The filmmaker further reveals that he’s developing original stories at Paramount in addition to beginning to open up that studio’s vault to see what franchises they might have on the shelf: “I definitely am thrilled at their excitement for some of my more original ideas, as well as looking into some of the stuff they have over there and see if there’s any fun unique ways into their IP.”
With that said, Trachtenberg confirms he is going to continue to work with 20th Century Studios/Disney on the future of the Predator franchise. In fact, he is toying with the prospect of the protagonists of Predator: Badlands, rogue Yautja short king Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) and his robo-bae Thia (Elle Fanning), crossing paths with Naru (Amber Midthunder), the Comanche protagonist of his other wildly bold live-action Predator reimagining, Prey (2022).
While Prey might be set in the 18th century, and Badlands in the 25th or further, the animated film that Trachtenberg also directed last year, Predator: Killer of Killers, featured a surprise easter egg where it turned out the Yautja deep-freeze any humans that best one of their species. Trachtenberg says the potential crossover that unlocks was “in the back of my mind, the side of my mind,” and everywhere else. He would also seem to tease that these dangling threads could mean a return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose beloved Dutch from the OG Predator (1987) is also seen in that Killer of Killers easter egg next to Naru.
“Basically where we are now is figuring out not only what would happen next with these Badlands characters but really all of the characters,” he cryptically doles out. “Like what would happen next for any of them, as well as, what have we not seen? What else has not happened yet in this franchise or in science fiction movies in general? So all things are being figured out now, as I had [to do] after Prey and then came up with Killer of Killers and Badlands.”
In the here and now, though, the filmmaker seems to still be basking in the victory of a film which he sheepishly admits took one of the most ferocious of movie monsters from the testosterone-heavy age of “Guns ’n Guns” action flicks in the 1980s, and put him in a scene that better echoed The Wizard of Oz (1939). It’s the one where Dek first meets a bisected Thia, hence her being absent her bottom half but not her chipper sense of humor. She’s strung up on an alien vulture’s nest asking for help, all but singing “if I only had a… pair of legs.”
“Definitely Wizard of Oz came up from time and time again, and yes, there’s a bit of Scarecrow there,” says Trachtenberg. “I was just talking about this with an actor the other day, there’s also a little bit of Willow, when they meet Madmartigan [Val Kilmer] for the first time, and he’s in the cage. There’s something in the vibe of that which is similar, even though for me the tone of Madmartigan is a little bit more [analogous] to Dek rather than Thia. But yeah that was a touching point as well as certainly Scarecrow.”
It’s the type of bold tonal mischief that both scared and thrilled Trachtenberg in the first place. He even recalls being on set and looking at three different actors of various enormity dressed to the nines as a paterfamilias Yautja and his two sons, and having an incredibly disquieting thought.
“When you’re talking to people about the movie while you’re still working on it, you don’t know if any of what you’re saying is going to be mocked and laughed at later because of how much you may have missed the mark,” Trachtenberg explains. “There was a big moment, halfway through shooting the movie, when I suddenly had this realization of ‘we could be making Howard the Duck right now!’ Like Howard the Duck, [George Lucas] made after Star Wars, and they had ILM working on it; they had an incredible costume designer; they built an awesome duck costume for the time; and they must have been feeling like, ‘We’re making something bold here. No one’s made a movie like this before!’ Which is how we were. No one’s done this. And then I realized that this could be ridiculous and silly, and people will mock us forever for thinking this was a good idea.”
Instead it would seem Trachtenberg was invited to level up to a bigger arena. There might be a lesson in that.
Predator: Badlands arrives on Hulu on Thursday, Feb. 12 and on 4K Blu-ray and home media on Tuesday, Feb. 17.
The post Dan Trachtenberg Confirms He’s Working on Paramount Franchises and More Predator Movies appeared first on Den of Geek.
