Director Dan Trachtenberg Teases Mysterious Third PREDATOR Project: "I Was So Eager to Get to the Third Thing"
Dan Trachtenberg isn’t slowing down in the Predator universe. After shaking up the franchise with Prey and following it up with the animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers and the upcoming live-action Predator: Badlands, the filmmaker is already teasing something even more ambitious, and it’s not what anyone expects.
In a recent interview with SFX Magazine, Trachtenberg revealed that both Killers and Badlands were fast-tracked because he couldn’t wait to get to a third, still-secret project:
“After Prey came out, and I started thinking about sequel stuff, there were three ideas that I had. Killers is one, Badlands is two and the third one is something else.
“The reason why I felt possessed to make them and sort of why I rushed – I did two at once because I could do, I could multitask with animation – was because I was so eager to get to the third thing.”
That third idea is still under wraps, but Trachtenberg made one thing clear: this isn’t about franchise momentum or corporate obligation, it’s about doing something no one’s seen before.
“There’s a lot of cool ideas out there and none of them are just like, ‘Oh, we have to say the next part of this story because it was successful.’ All of it is like, ‘Whoa, no one has done that in sci-fi. No one has done that in Predator. No one’s done that with the creature,’ all of those ideas are generated from that instinct. So, yeah, there is definitely a third thing that I’d love to get to when Badlands is finished.”
Killer of Killers, which debuted June 6 on Hulu and Disney+, features a triptych of deadly confrontations across time. From 841 AD Viking warriors to feudal-era ninjas and WWII pilots, the animated film connects these bloody showdowns, cleverly link to existing Predator canon, and it was awesome!
Meanwhile, Predator: Badlands, which hits theaters November 7, marks a return to live-action. It stars Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as Dek, an outcast Predator, and Elle Fanning as Thia, a Weyland-Yutani android. So, naturally the Alien vs. Predator speculation is heating up again.
Toss in Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez cheekily suggesting a crossover with Trachtenberg, “Maybe we should do something like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did with From Dusk Till Dawn”, and it’s clear something is bubbling beneath the surface.
Whatever this “third thing” is, it’s a project that Trachtenberg’s been racing toward the entire time, and I can’t wait to see what he’s got cooking!