The Predator sequel has put Shane Black in the mood for another Monster Squad movie

By Danette Chavez  |  August 16, 2016 | 2:25pm
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The Predator sequel has put Shane Black in the mood for another Monster Squad movie

Shane Black’s been hard at work watching Ridley Scott movies to prepare for his “inventive” Predator sequel, which will be set in the present day, before all those Predators made trouble for Walton Goggins and Topher Grace. Black did appear in and do some uncredited script work for the original Predator movie, so he’s been pulling from those experiences as well for the next installment in the franchise that’s gone from reboot to follow-up. And it looks like that gear change has whetted Black’s appetite for sequels to 1987 films. No, not Lethal Weapon—the writer-director tells IGN that he’d love to check in with The Monster Squad. The horror-comedy was one of Black’s first scripts, and followed a group of preteens who end up using their fictional-monsters expertise to slay some in real life, stopping along the way to learn about lycanthrope anatomy.

IGN sat down with The Nice Guys director just to talk about his tale of monster-hunting kids, which turns 30 next year. Black is aware of the film’s cult following, though he says he has no idea why it caught on. And while he first suggested a remake of the film, Black was sold on the notion of a sequel by IGN’s interviewer.

It would be interesting to have two movies—one The Monster Squad, and one The Monster Squad and they’re 30 years apart and so are the kids; the characters have aged. As long as people understood that’s what we’re doing, I think that could be fun. That’s a good idea!

The only thing holding Black back is his concern that a movie about adults who must confront childhood fears would recall Stephen King’s It, which is itself in the process of being remade. That’s the “first thing” Black thinks of when he considers these adult monster hunters, who were “kids who fight monsters when they’re young, then as grown-ups they’re sort of beckoned and they have to return to their childhood hometown.” He finds IGN’s pitch a little too similar to that concept, and doesn’t “know how you would distance yourself from that.”

But Black still sounds pretty game about the whole thing, and since he’s already working on the new Predator movie with his Monster Squad co-writer Fred Dekker, they could find a way to update the concept. After all, both properties center on hunters of some kind, so they’re already in chase mode—but they should probably avoid any crossovers.

 
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