In the middle of 2024, IGN was invited to the southern suburban fringe of Auckland in New Zealand where, in several giant sound stages nestled amidst soccer fields and service stations, director Dan Trachtenberg and his team were busy crafting the out-of-this-world adventure Predator: Badlands. We spent a day wandering through the damaged hull of a crashed Yautja spaceship, got up close and personal with the hi-tech exterior of a Weyland-Yutani research base, and stared up at a towering replica of a redwood forest canopy to be used for a spectacular stunt sequence.
We also got to spend time with the cast and crew, including producer Ben Rosenblatt who laid out his and Trachtenberg’s vision for a predator movie unlike any that has come before in the series.
“This all takes place way in the future after everything that we know from the universe of Alien and Weyland-Yutani and Predator and Alien vs. Predator; all that stuff,” explained Rosenblatt. “This is the farthest out [the series has] gone. [And for] the tone of the movie we're trying to strike a balance between all the cool badass stuff that you'd expect out of a Predator film – lots of great action, lots of serious moments, and the badass stuff – but also we want it to be like an adventure film [where] we actually connect with the characters. So that's kind of the balance we're taking.”
Here’s everything we learned visiting the set of Predator: Badlands.
1. Predator: Badlands is Turning the Hunter into the Hunted
Predator: Badlands’ most radical change right off the bat is that it casts a young predator named Dek as the hero of the story (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi). Although these “ugly motherf**kers” have served as intimidating antagonists ever since Arnie’s special forces unit was dropped into a meat grinder in the 1987 original, Predator: Badlands asks audiences to sympathise with one of these mandible-mouthed monsters for the very first time.
“Our story begins on Yautja Prime with this predator and his immediate family and, through a series of both exciting and tragic events, he's set off on a journey on a foreign planet [Genna] and that's where most of the film is taking place,” explained Rosenblatt.
Director Dan Trachtenberg, who also helmed 2022’s superb albeit disappointingly straight-to-streaming Predator prequel Prey, is confident that fans will have no problem warming to Dek despite being conditioned to view previous predators as some sort of unstoppable, intergalactic Jason Vorhees’ in every other Predator film.
“I've just always had a deep affection for underdog stories,” said Trachtenberg. “Prey was certainly that and I think Dek’s story is still that of an underdog. He’s involved in a very traumatic event in the beginning of the movie that he's taking this whole adventure to deal with. So, from the jump you are thrust into a really high intensity, physical and emotional situation with him that I think will really put you in his shoes.”
Schuster-Koloamatangi, appearing in his first major Hollywood role, agrees that Predator: Badlands is set to give fans something that they’ve never experienced before.
“It's cool to be able to follow one of the predators that everyone is so scared of and then kind of have a deeper look into their culture, into their background, what makes them them, and kind of understand why it is they're travelling around everywhere killing everybody,” said Schuster-Koloamatangi.
2. It’s Not a Sequel to Prey
Despite the fact that the dynamic duo behind Predator: Badlands, director Dan Trachtenberg and producer Ben Rosenblatt, is the same core production team that was behind 2022’s excellent Predator prequel, Prey, this new movie is not to be considered as a Prey 2. But that doesn’t mean that Trachtenberg and Rosenblatt don’t have hopes for a Prey 2 in the future.
“Prey is something we're very proud of, we love [it], we're happy other people loved it. It's not something we're abandoning,” said Rosenblatt. “We could have done a Prey 2, we could have done a Prey where it’s a different time period, but I think for us we were like how do we move things forward? [Prey] was something people hadn’t done with the franchise before. In thinking about what to do next, Dan was really set on [coming up with] the kind of big swing that no one’s taken yet.”
3. It’s Not an Alien vs. Predator Movie Either, Although it Does Feature Weyland-Yutani
A part of that big swing is to crossover the plot of Predator: Badlands with the Alien universe, by featuring synthetic soldiers and researchers dispatched to the planet Genna by the infamous xenomorph-weaponising Weyland-Yutani corporation. However, it’s strictly synths in Predator: Badlands; there will be none of HR Giger’s chest-bursting creations along for the ride.
“It's not an Alien vs. Predator movie so there will not be a xenomorph,” confirmed Rosenblatt. “Hopefully one day, but this is kind of us dipping our toe. The worlds coexist and this is kind of like bringing them together.”
“The back story is that Weyland-Yutani has sent an all-synth mission onto this planet to pursue the very same beast for their own purposes,” explained Rosenblatt. “Obviously, the Yautja are interested in honour-killing and proving themselves and Weyland-Yutani often has a different objective. So that is who [Dek] encounters along the way. He does not know that at first but that is what it ultimately becomes.”
That’s not to say that there won’t be some Alien-centric easter eggs to be spotted in Predator: Badlands. During our set visit we were able to walk around the deck of a crashed predator spaceship, presumably belonging to either Dek or one of his family members, and we spied a trophy room adorned with what very much looked like xenomorph skulls…
4. Elle Fanning Plays Two Synths, Thia and Tessa
Death Stranding 2’s Elle Fanning plays the twin roles of Weyland-Yutani synthetics Thia and Tessa. The former is both literally and figuratively bonded with Dek over the course of the adventure, with the latter seemingly in hot pursuit of the plucky young predator and his legless passenger. But, given how far into the future Predator: Badlands is set, Fanning is imbuing these synths with far more humanity than what we’ve come to expect from the likes of Ian Holm’s Ash or Michael Fassbender’s David in previous instalments in the Alien franchise.
“When you see David in Prometheus, there’s a quality to the acting that feels somewhat robotic,” said Rosenblatt. “We are not playing that. We’re thinking of them as being the latest iteration [of synths] to the extent that they can feel, more so than anyone we’ve seen so far.”
Thia and Tessa are research synths dispatched to the planet by Weyland-Yutani to harvest what they can from it, for typically nefarious Weyland-Yutani purposes, but Fanning’s twins aren’t the only synths in Predator: Badlands. The research mission is led by more militaristic androids, so presumably there will be quite a lot of predator-on-synth violence in store.
5. The Predators Have Their Own Language Now
In previous films the predators have communicated using a combination of basic clicks and pitch-perfect Jesse Ventura impressions, but for Predator: Badlands the filmmakers have gone ahead and created a full language for the Yautja creatures. Thanks to the work of language expert Britton Watkins, the Yautja in Predator: Badlands actually speak to each other in full sentences (translated into subtitles for the audience’s benefit), and all of the markings on their weaponry and armour have actual meaning rather than simply serving an ornamental purpose.
“What Britton did was, as much as possible, he took everything that had come before [in previous films] and said, ‘Okay, let me try to synthesise this into a working language,’” explains Rosenblatt. “He’s developed the alphabet. There’s a dictionary. [But] one of the biggest challenges for Britton in creating the language, was making sure that it fits what is anatomically possible with the Yautja face and mouth and that kind of thing. Like working the clicks into it and making something sort of guttural and not too much enunciation or tongue action.”
6. Predator: Badlands was Inspired by The Empire Strikes Back
For much of Predator: Badlands, Dek is saddled with Thia’s legless body in a backpack, after she just barely survives an attack from a native Genna monster called a Kalisk. From there the film becomes a road trip buddy movie of sorts, with the pair slowly forging a bond while also defying death in the face of Genna’s numerous threats.
“I love the pairing. My pitch was that it was like Chewbacca and C-3PO: The Movie. Like the end of The Empire Strikes Back? I was tantalized by the fun of that,” said Trachtenberg.
Star Wars hasn’t been the only significant influence on the film, however. Trachtenberg also namechecks Conan the Barbarian as being a key reference point when crafting Badlands’ setting, claiming “there’s something in the fabric of that world that’s fantasy but brutal, and pirate-y, that’s different than Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or Avatar.”
Speaking of pirates, he also points to another ’80s classic as providing a source of inspiration.
“The Goonies,” said Trachtenberg. “There was almost more Goonies [influence] in the movie. We’ll see; there’s still time for there to be more Goonies in it.”
Will Dek be forced to perform a truffle shuffle to entertain the shattered synth strapped to his back? Maybe in the director’s cut.
7. The Predator Faces Are Being Created Digitally…
While the monster’s face in the original Predator was a gurgling feat of practical VFX brilliance from master make-up effects artist Stan Winston, the predators in Badlands will be a combination of both practical and digital effects according to creature designer Alec Gillis. Gillis is a veteran of the VFX world, having worked on multiple entries in both the Alien and Predator series, along with Godzilla vs. Kong, It, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and countless others. According to him, a blend of both worlds is essential to achieve the very best results.
“We'll base things as much as we can in reality, in physical pieces, and then we use the CGI to augment and to build the world and the universe that they inhabit,” explained Gillis. “Because you can't make a modern movie without really beautiful digital effects. Sometimes the fans get a little like villagers carrying the torches saying, ‘We hate CGI,’ and we're like, ‘No, no, you only don't like the CGI that you're noticing.’ Every movie that you watch now, every shot is somehow touched digitally. Either through colour grading or compositing or fixes and so on.”
Gillis and his team did initially attempt to craft the predator faces with a combination of makeup and animatronics to reasonably good results, but in the end he decided to draft in the expertise of the animators at Weta Digital to provide more subtle facial expression via motion capture.
“Right around the time we were doing the [physical test], we got to see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and it had such spectacular performances,” explained Gillis. “It’s undeniable. As an artist, I have to stand up for my craft, but I also have to be able to look a director in the eye and say you have to use the right tool for the right application.”
8. … But There Are Still Plenty of Practical Effects and Shots On Location
That said, Predator: Badlands’ production team has still gone to great lengths to rely on practical effects as much as possible, creating physical replicas of many of the creatures to feature in scenes rather than force its cast to engage with the old tennis-ball-on-a-stick trick.
“You see real creatures on set interacting with actors, and that’s always a great thing when acting is reacting,” said Gillis. “So if you give someone something to play off, then you [get] a better result.”
The stunt team, led by coordinator Jacob Tomuri, also went to exhaustive lengths to allow Schuster-Koloamatangi’s Dek to carry Fanning’s Thia on his back in the most convincing manner possible, during the roughly 30 days of the film’s production that took place on location in New Zealand’s Redwoods Forest.
“We had to build truss towers and span slack lines between trees,” explained Tomuri. “And we created a thing called a bosun’s chair, which we put underneath Elle’s hamstrings and attached it to a spreader so we could travel her along the slack line with a counterweight system. It took up 70% of Elle’s weight so it would still look like there was weight in the backpack, but it meant that Demetrius could do all the running, sprinting, jumping, and navigating through the landscape.”
Schuster-Koloamatangi, a New Zealander, relished the opportunity to have the natural beauty of his home country featured so prominently in the film despite the fact the physical nature of his performance took a bit of a toll.
“The shoulders are a bit bigger now than they were before I started [filming],” joked Schuster-Koloamatangi. “But the pain is a privilege, and being out in New Zealand was just unreal. Because there are so many things a sound stage can’t replicate. Being outdoors just adds that little texture that the film needs. It feels real, because it was.”
9. It Features Some Pretty Creative Fight Sequences
The Predator series is no stranger to spectacular scraps, from the original film’s final showdown between Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and the man-hunting monster, to the showcase of advanced weaponry and acrobatics involved in the predator’s slaughter of the fur trappers in Prey. Predator: Badlands is set to add a number of iconic encounters of its own to that list, from a major battle between Dek and a hulking monster called a Kalisk, to a fight between Dek and his brother Kwei dangling from stalactites in a cave – unofficially dubbed the “stalacfight” by the production crew.
“I read the script and I thought it was incredibly original,” said Tomuri, who previously collaborated on the stunt sequences for George Miller’s Furiosa. “Some of the sequences I was like, I've never actually seen that, or heard of that in any action sequence before.”
One such sequence highlighted by Tomuri involves a fight between Thia and some rival synths, which doesn’t sound all that interesting until you consider the fact that Thia’s upper and lower body have been separated and are acting independently.
“The legs and the torso work together – like a buddy fight – to beat these synths up,” explained Tomuri. “And I was like, I can't say I've ever seen this before in anything and then also, how the hell am I going to do that?”
Trachtenberg agrees that one of the goals with Predator: Badlands is to push the envelope when it comes to fight choreography. “[You’re going] to see things that we’ve never gotten to see the predator do, other than maybe in some comics and games,” says Trachtenberg. “We’ve never seen the predator hunt on an alien planet, or at least hunt non-humans on an alien planet. Or seen a predator take on synths. He’s up against things that are way more crazy than we’ve ever seen a predator deal with before.”
10. The Predator’s Arsenal is a Combination of Advanced Weaponry and Makeshift Tools
The Predator series is synonymous with serious killing tools, from Jesse Ventura’s rainforest-razing ‘Old Painless’ mini-gun to the razor-edged smart disc in Predator 2 that homed in on body heat and returned to its user like a boomerang. However, Predator: Badlands is evidently switching to more organically sourced death-dealers, at least as far as its hero is concerned.
“The Predators always have weapons and cool gadgets and [Dek] has got that stuff,” explained Gillis. “But it is stripped away from him in the crash by the lifeforms that are on this planet. And so we had this idea that what if he kind of recreates his weaponry through the use of organic things [he finds]?”
Examples presented to us include a whip fashioned out of ‘razor grass’, as well as a gauntlet crafted out of a vulture-like alien’s beak. Lastly there is ‘Squirt’, a snake-like creature that Dek repurposes as a replacement for the more traditional predator shoulder cannon, wrapping its tail around his arm and pulling it to trigger an attack.
“[Dek] finds this lifeform that he trains to sit on his shoulder, and it has the ability to spit two chemicals that become explosive and fiery when they combine in the air,” said Gillis, going on to explain that the inspiration came from the real world Bombardier Beetle, which when threatened ejects a noxious spray by combining hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide.
That said, New Zealand-based Weta Workshop has also come to the table with a big variety of high-tech weaponry, a lot of it wielded by the combat synths that Dek is forced to contend with. Wandering around the propmaster’s store room on set reveals a number of modular weapons like handguns that can transform into rifles, a gauntlet shield to be wielded by Dek’s brother Kwei, as well as classic predator weapons like the telescopic combistick that can be used as both a hand-to-hand weapon and thrown like a spear.
Schuster-Koloamatangi has a clear favourite weapon to wield, though. “It’s the plasma sword. I like how it looks. I don’t like how heavy it is, but the sword is really cool. It’s a massive sword.”
11. Predator: Badlands Won’t be R-rated, But it Will Still be Very Violent
There will be plenty of blood spilled in Predator: Badlands, just not the kind that tends to get censorship boards all hot and bothered. Although synthetics, predators, and various other alien monsters will be violently torn asunder, not a single human character will be harmed during Badlands’ runtime, which should mean that the film receives a rating less severe than the majority of its predecessors.
“We'll see where it ends up, but our hope for it is that it can be a PG-13 that feels like an R,” said Rosenblatt. “That's kind of our hope. And really, what that's about is just being able to broaden out the audience for a movie like this.”
“We don't have any humans in the movie and so we don't have any human red blood,” continued Rosenblatt. “So we're hoping that's gonna play to our advantage. We're going to go as hard as we possibly can within those constraints, and we think we'll be able to do some pretty awesomely gruesome stuff. But in colours other than red.”
Get ready for some milky synthetic goop and glowing green predator blood to fill the screen by the bucketload.
12. Badlands is Aiming to be the Terminator 2 of the Predator Series
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of the greatest action movies of all time, but tonally it’s noticeably different to its predecessor, which was constructed more like a sci-fi slasher movie. Trachtenberg hopes that Predator: Badlands will stand apart from previous Predator films in a similar fashion.
“[The difference] for me is like, I never thought my mom should see The Terminator, but I did think she should see Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” explained Trachtenberg.
“Terminator 2 is thematically oriented to be about parents and children, while also still badass and awesome. So it felt like a way to get my mom to watch a cool action movie [because] it had this whole other engine to it. It was really story focussed. So I really felt heartened that there is a way to continue doing these movies that can have a warmth at the centre but also still be incredibly ferocious and action-oriented and all the things that you'd expect from the Predator franchise.”
Will Predator: Badlands please both existing fans and newcomers alike? Will Dek evolve from runt of the litter to badarse hunter-killer? Will it setup the next instalment in the Alien vs. Predator series? We’ll get the answers to all of these questions and more, when Predator: Badlands arrives in theaters on November 7th, 2025.
Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN’s Sydney office. He travelled to the set of Predator: Badlands as a guest of Disney.
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