Earlier this week, Fox went up to Shane Black and said, “Y’know, I’d like a little Predator franchise reboot.” And now Black has replied, “Me too—that franchise is as big as a house.” All of which is a roundabout, unfunny-to-Sonny Landham-and-everyone sort of way of saying that Black’s reboot of the 1987 film will actually be more of a sequel than a big restart, with Black telling Collider that he and co-screenwriter Fred Dekker don’t really see any need to wipe the slate on the Predator universe.
“As far as Fred and I are concerned anyway, why start over, when you’ve all this rich mythology yet to mine?” Black said of the vast, sacred narrative of dreadlocked aliens on an intergalactic hunting trip, and all the details therein that have yet to be explored across five other movies. (What are the evolutionary advantages of those dreadlocks, besides tracking prey at shitty concerts? Are the Predators just trying to avoid their wives—this “hunting trip” yet another mask they wear to hide their fear of intimacy?)
Anyway, Black’s rejection of the word “reboot” aside, it’s unclear yet whether this will attempt to be more of a direct sequel by bringing back Arnold Schwarzenegger, pairing him with Danny Glover’s L.A. cop from Predator 2, attempting to pick up the loose threads of either of the Alien Vs. Predator movies or 2010’s Predators, or even expanding on Ice Cube’s The Predator—perhaps revisiting the equally sacred narrative of “It Was A Good Day” and forcing Cube to finally use his AK, because now there’s a Predator. Still, no doubt Black will have more concrete information soon on whose Christmas his Predator will ruin.
