Dan Trachtenberg had a clever marketing ploy for Prey that we wish had panned out.
The director wanted to hide the fact that Prey was part of the Predator franchise by cutting a trailer absent the titular alien. He had this idea all the way back when 2018’s The Predator was in production.
“My pitch to the studio was, ‘What if we put out a trailer that is just the first act of this movie?'” Trachtenberg told Screen Rant. “‘That is just the story of this Comanche girl who sets out to prove herself and ends up in the woods, and then sees a fire in the sky?’ And that would be it. It wouldn’t have a title, or it would have a fake title or something.”
The Predator-less trailer for Prey would have been released pre-The Predator to inform audiences about an upcoming Native American action film, and then they’d be blown away when the full trailer, containing Predator, would play before The Predator. At least that was Trachtenberg’s plan:
“And then when that last Predator movie came out, we would attach the full trailer. And that would include the bear sequence, where the bear is lifted up and the blood drips down and reveals the Predator. And then you would know, ‘Oh, this is a Predator movie.’ Certainly, it would have been amazing if we could have kept it secret the whole time and the movie announced itself while you’re watching it. But I think that’s a little less realistic, so I thought maybe marketing could have done that trick.”
Although you were cheated out of one surprise, there will likely be many more when you watch Prey, which will premiere on Aug. 5 on Hulu, becoming the first Predator movie exclusive to streaming.