{"id":262821,"date":"2025-11-05T07:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T07:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262821\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T07:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T07:15:09","slug":"james-cameron-didnt-think-predator-badlands-would-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262821\/","title":{"rendered":"James Cameron didn’t think Predator: Badlands would work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg included a special thank you to James Cameron in the credits, but just how was the Avatar director involved? The new Predator sequel was shot in New Zealand, and Trachtenberg told THR<\/a> he received an invitation from Cameron to visit for the day. Can\u2019t really turn that offer down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI consider myself incredibly blessed, and it\u2019s probably largely thanks to both of us making movies with the same collaborators at 20th Century. He saw Prey and loved it, and so we had been in touch,\u201d Trachtenberg said. \u201cAnd when I went down to New Zealand to start prepping Badlands, he invited me over to see what he was doing down in Wellington. So I spent some time on the stage with him and in the edit bay [of Avatar: Fire and Ash]. In the edit bay, I told him the crazy thing that we were doing, and the crazy way we were doing it, and how it would be very new and new to the franchise and new to me as a filmmaker.\u201c<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cThen we drove separately to dinner, and when he came in and sat down, he said, \u2018I was just thinking about what you\u2019re doing, and I think it\u2019s going to work.\u2019 So all that wind in my sails carried me back up to Auckland to tell my crew. The blessing of that guy \u2014\u00a0who has taken on some pretty impossible odds and pulled them off \u2014\u00a0was absolutely incredible.\u201c<\/p>\n

Related
\n
\n Predator Badlands Review: It\u2019s Super Fun, but it\u2019s also VERY PG-13 and Tame <\/a><\/p>\n

Getting the thumbs up from the director behind the biggest movies of all-time was a hell of a boost, but Cameron later confessed he wasn\u2019t really sure Trachtenberg would pull it off. \u201c[Cameron] saw the movie a couple months back, and he said, \u2018I have to be honest with you. When I first heard what you were doing, I did not think it was going to work. But holy crap, you pulled it off,\u2019\u201d Trachtenberg said. \u201cHe either did not remember that first conversation that meant a whole lot to me, or he really does know what someone in my position needs to hear to get things done. I think it\u2019s more the latter. So he put wind in our sails at just the right times, and I had to make sure we gave him a special thanks.\u201c<\/p>\n

Predator: Badlands is set in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Elle Fanning) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.<\/p>\n

The film has been receiving largely positive reviews, and our own Chris Bumbray had a lot of fun with it. However, he did add that the PG-13 rating<\/a> makes it feel a little out of place compared to the older Predator movies. \u201cAs for the PG-13 rating \u2014 as much as critics who are all aboard with the new direction will say it \u2018feels\u2019 like an R-rated movie because there\u2019s lots of alien gore, I beg to differ,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThis was clearly conceived as a movie for a younger audience, with them even giving Dek and Thia a cute sidekick animal they name Bud to tag along. It\u2019s certainly a well-done PG-13, but it\u2019s definitely not a movie targeted at the older\u00a0Predator\u00a0audience (unlike\u00a0Prey, which was still pretty gnarly).\u201d You can check out the rest of his review right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg included a special thank you to James Cameron in the credits, but just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,5961,337,56360],"class_list":{"0":"post-262821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-james-cameron","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-predator-badlands"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}