If you thought producers John Davis and John Fox were going to “get to the choppa” and leave the jungle after finishing up work on the family-friendly adventure Jungle Cruise, you must not have noticed the next film on the duo’s docket. In an exclusive interview with Collider, Davis and Fox provided us with some pretty big details about their work on the upcoming Predator prequel Skull — which seems perhaps further along in development than previously thought. During the interview, the producers revealed the highly-anticipated title of the film as well as shared a bit more information about the film’s plot, progress, and how it fits in with the other entries in the series.
According to Davis and Fox, Skull tells the story of a female hero fighting to survive during the Predator’s first journey to Earth. While this certainly sounds like the plot to a Predator movie, Davis revealed the upcoming prequel actually shares quite a bit in common with another movie: the Academy Award-winning drama The Revenant. With this in mind, Skull is seemingly aiming to deliver audiences an intimate life-or-death struggle that will be “the second best — or the first [best]” film in the franchise, according to Davis. However — regardless of if this prequel does best the much-loved original — Davis says that at the very least Skull aims to match Predators tone:
“It goes back to what made the original Predator movie work. It’s the ingenuity of a human being who won’t give up, who’s able to observe and interpret, basically being able to beat a stronger, more powerful, well-armed force.”
As of right now, the team has confirmed Skull is “three-quarters of the way through” production, placing its release date way sooner than we might have anticipated. Davis says that the film’s rating will ultimately be dependent on the cuts made by the editing team, and while it was conceived as an R-rated film, it could be cut down to PG-13. In addition, both directors expressed confidence in the film’s script — written by Patrick Aison — as well as in the film’s “brilliant director” Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane). If all goes as well as it sounds, it looks like we could be seeing a new Predator movie sometime next year.
