Update: It would seem that Dan Trachtenberg has been working on this PREDATOR project for quite time time, but now that the news is out in the world, his original plans for unveiling the film unfortunately won't be happening.
This was meant to be a surprise. Been working on this for almost 4 years now. I am very sad that what we had in store for how you could discover this movie will no longer happen. It’s a bummer. But also…YAY! https://t.co/pKWz9tDAEB
— Dan Trachtenberg (@DannyTRS) November 20, 2020
After the announcement of Deadpool 3 moving forward at Marvel Studios, Disney is leveraging another 20th Century Studios property for a new iteration. PREDATOR is coming back, again, and this time with Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) at the helm.
As the fifth installment of the Predator franchise, this new entry comes two years after the lackluster critical and commercial performance of THE PREDATOR from writer/director Shane Black. That film followed Nimrod Antal's underrated PREDATORS and the derided PREDATOR 2. There were also the two ALIEN VS PREDATOR films but we won't talk about those.
The fifth film will be written by Patrick Aison who has scripted episodes of Kingdom, Jack Ryan, and Treadstone on the small screen. No plot details have been revealed as of yet but sources tell Deadline it will not be a direct continuation of THE PREDATOR. Trachtenberg brings some genre cred to the film thanks to his debut short film based on the Valve video game Portal and his stellar feature film 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE. Since that film, Trachtenberg has directed an episode of Black Mirror as well as the pilot for the Amazon Prime series The Boys.
PREDATOR as a franchise has failed to live up to its 1987 original which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recent video game Predator: Hunting Grounds showed there is still life in the storyline but it remains to be seen if this new take on the iconic alien hunter can replicate the magic of the classic film or if it will fizzle like recent rehashes such as TERMINATOR: DARK FATE.
