A new Predator movie is about to hit screens, and Badlands connects to the Alien franchise in a pretty extensive way.
The Alien and Predator movies have been interlinked ever since Dark Horse Comics launched the Alien vs Predator series in 1989.
The two properties are both owned by Fox, meaning Predator 2 was able to feature an inside joke in 1990, when an Alien skull could be spotted on a Predator ship.
That paved the way for a pair of forgettable Alien vs Predator movies, but thanks to some Alien action in Predator: Badlands, we might get a good version of that concept in the near future. Though as we’re explaining exactly how and why below, beware of SPOILERS ahead…
Alien corporation Weyland-Yutani features in Predator: Badlands
Weyland-Yutani is the shady tech corporation at the heart of the Alien movies, with the company’s nefarious plans largely responsible all that Xenomorph death and destruction.
The Predator: Badlands trailers and stills have indicated that Weyland-Yutani features in the new Predator movie, with the company name and logo appearing on clothes, spaceships, and computer screens.
Writer-director Dan Trachtenberg says that idea came to him during the writing process, in a new featurette titled ‘Weyland-Yutani’ returns.
“Following the movie Prey, I was thinking about what I would do next,” Trachtenberg explains, while wearing a Weyland-Yutani cap on the movie’s set. “I wanted to make, truly, an adventure movie about a monster and a robot.
“And then it was like ‘oh, I know some people that make robots’ – the Weyland-Yutani corporation, from the Alien franchise, that has linkage to the Predator franchise.”
Robots are calls “synthetics,” or “synths” in the Alien movies, and it’s the same in Predator: Badlands, where we’ll see a lot more of them, performing a quite different role.
New Predator movie features “different kinds of synthetic units”
The Weyland-Yutani logo also appears on the eyeballs – yes eyeballs – of Thia, the character played by Elle Fanning, whom the below image indicates is part of the ‘Weyland-Yutani Bio-Weapons Division.’
In the same featurette, Fanning explains that: “Thia is a Weyland-Yutani synth. Her model knows [the planet] Genna very, very well. She’s been looking at how this planet works, and she has a lot of information that [Predator] Dek can use from that.”
While Trachtenberg reveals that Thia isn’t the only synth in play, explaining that: “What’s interesting in Badlands is you’re seeing different kinds of synthetic units.
“Usually the synthetic unit is something that’s meant to blend in with the human crew. But now we find a battalion of synths. These drone hunters that are made to kill.”
One final connection between the Alien movies and Predator: Badlands can also be glimpsed in early footage released online.
To the left of the below image, you can see the words “Hello MU/TH/UR.” on a screen, which is a term that’s regularly used in the Alien movies.
MU/TH/UR – more commonly referred to as “Mother” – is the AI system aboard Weyland-Yutani spacecrafts, dating all the way back to the USCSS Nostromo in the 1979 Alien movie.
Mother pilots vessels while the crew is in hypersleep, and wakes them from that slumber early should issues arise. And we all know how that plays out, so it will probably be worth keeping an eye on Mother during Badlands.
There are even more connections to Alien in the new Predator, but they are proper spoilers, so we’ll add them to this article once the movie hits screens on November 7, 2025.
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