After lighting up CinemaCon with “lots of blood, action and explosions,” things are finally looking up for The Predator.
Having undergone extensive reshoots in Vancouver earlier this year and watched a pair of release dates fall by the wayside, the Shane Black-directed reboot seems to have found its footing, due in no small part to a volatile teaser trailer.
Said to take place between the events of Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010), the flubbed 20th Century Fox reboot/sequel, the first footage from The Predator saw the “universe’s most lethal hunters” enter “small-town suburbia…deadlier than ever before.”
Director and co-writer Shane Black (Iron Man 3) explained last week that his reimagining would both reinvent the film series and honour the previous instalments, saying while his interpretation will, of course, revolve around a hunt, it will also explore what happens when “the Predators get a little more ambitious.”
“Having genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species,” it appears that there will be more than one titular extraterrestrial in Shane Black’s blockbuster, and stuntman Brian A. Prince (Black Panther), who will be playing one of the main beasts, added his two cents on what makes his Predator different.
During a sit-down with Den of Geek, Prince, a 6’10” parkour athlete, explicated that his monster is “a lot more mobile.”
“This creature’s a lot more mobile. In the other films, they’d move, for sure, but a lot of the times, in the first one, there wasn’t a lot of agile movement. So with this one, for me, they’re throwing me through things, I’m fighting, slashing. One of the things I had in mind was for the creature to look heavy, to look big, but also to be very mobile – kind of like a lion. A big creature… or a bear. You see one running at you, and you’re like, Oh damn.”
Prince then revealed, somewhat surprisingly, that his performance was inspired by the video game, God of War, and more specifically the main character, Kratos.
“I have a lot of stuff from the God Of War games because that character’s a big inspiration for me. The main character of that game is Kratos – this big, tall warrior. He’s very similar to what the Predator creature is, in my mind, so I use him as a reference and inspiration.”
Incredibly, Prince “trained for weeks in a wetsuit to acclimate himself to the constrictions of the wardrobe.”
The Predator is currently slated for a September 14th release stateside later this year and will star Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Jacob Tremblay and Sterling K. Brown.