It's been 33 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger confronted the Predator in the movie of the same name. The claustrophobic action classic almost saw Arnie come a cropper at the hands of the dreadlocked alien monster, a fearsome intergalactic hunter who stalks and kills prize humans for sport.
Director John McTiernan's sweatily engrossing jungle classic gave rise to a series of increasingly redundant sequels and spin-offs. The most recent, 2018's The Predator, was helmed by Shane Black who had appeared in the original movie. It wasn't much to write home about, despite its box office success.
On a more positive note, 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg has now been put in charge of a new Predator movie. Deadline confirms that Trachtenberg will collaborate with 20th Century Studios (formerly Fox, the original series distributor) to bring us another story of extraterrestrial carnage.
This is excellent news. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a drum-tight and exciting extension of the Cloverfield mythology, plunging us into an underground bunker while the outside world was beset by something horrible. Trachtenberg demonstrated a skilled sense of pace, not to mention an ability to elicit strong performances from his actors (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman both gave career-bests), which surely bodes well for the new Predator movie. After all, what good is a Predator film without that all-encompassing sense of threat and paranoia?
Deadline reports that Jack Ryan writer Patrick Aison is on scripting duties. We wonder where the Predator series can possibly go from here: the original Arnie film took place in the humid jungles of Central America, before 1990's Predator 2 moved the action to Los Angeles, literalising the notion of the urban jungle.
Years later in 2004, we got the first Alien vs Predator movie, which pitted the title character against the acid-blooded xenomorph. An even-worse sequel, Requiem followed in 2007, before the Predator franchise was stripped back to its roots in 2010's Predators. The film occupied the creatures' home planet, recalibrating the original movie's plot as a group of humans find themselves hunted for sport. It was then back down to Earth in the aforementioned The Predator – like we said, we've pretty much been everywhere and done everything.
We'll post more details here on the Cineworld blog as and when we get them. In the meantime, tweet us your thoughts on the movie @Cineworld.
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