Shane Black's The Predator has been one of the hottest movie titles in the news cycle as of late, and the last few days brought a number of updates and clarifications on the Shane Black-directed sequel/reboot. Let's get right to it:
1. Black told Den of Geek that the film's “sensibility will be part noir, part mystery and part Close Encounters.”
“The feeling I loved about Close Encounters was, you had this ordinary guy, Roy Neary, to whom this is all new. I think the danger of a Predator sequel is that it's not new to anybody anymore. 'Oh, look honey – another Predator. Yeah, we had one of those last year. Gagh, is he in the barn again? Oh God, he's had the sheep.' You know? That's the danger. That it's too familiar – we have to find a way to make him mysterious again.”
2. Co-screenwriter Fred Dekker compared the film to James Cameron's Aliens.
“If you think of the first Predator as Alien, ours is much more Aliens,” Dekker told director Adam Green on the latest episode of he and Joe Lynch's Movie Crypt podcast (via EW). “It”s not [Agatha Christie's] Ten Little Indians, it”s not, Let”s kill off all of our characters, because we have a lot of characters, from a lot of different worlds and ideologies. I don”t mean other planets. It”s a lot of people doing a lot of things in a lot of locations.”
3. Dekker also says the film will reveal more about the motivations behind the aliens' hunting behavior.
“There”s a lot of great stuff in the [original] Predator but it”s very simple,” said Dekker elsewhere during the podcast (via EW). “Guys get dropped in a jungle, and there”s an alien monster, and they fight the monster, and they all die except for one – spoiler alert! – and then the thing self-destructs, and there”s a nuke, and then [Arnold Schwarzenegger's character] flies away. It”s relatively simple. And our idea was, Okay, we know that story already. What”s behind the curtain? Why are they here? What are they doing? What”s the bigger picture of this?… I think these are questions you can answer, or at least explore, without defeating that sense of scariness. And who knows if their agenda”s changed?”
4. The release date has changed.
Originally slated for March 2, 2018, the film has been moved up about three weeks, to February 9, 2018. [via Deadline]
For more on The Predator, click here for a full list of things you need to know.