{"id":243969,"date":"2025-11-04T20:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/243969\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T20:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:29:09","slug":"badlands-originally-featured-return-of-preys-naru-director-teases-avengers-level-endgame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/243969\/","title":{"rendered":"BADLANDS Originally Featured Return Of PREY’s Naru; Director Teases AVENGERS-Level Endgame"},"content":{"rendered":"

Predator: Badlands arrives in theaters this Friday, but many fans already have one eye on the future. Filmmaker\u00a0Dan Trachtenberg previously helmed Prey\u00a0and teased the return of the movie’s lead, Naru, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch,\u00a0at the end of the animated Predator: Killer of Killers.<\/p>\n

While we may eventually get a team-up featuring various characters from the Predator franchise, it seems\u00a0the current idea is for a new Alien vs. Predator movie (Badlands somewhat sets the stage for that with the presence of\u00a0Weyland-Yutani).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Talking to\u00a0ComicBook.com<\/a>\u00a0(via SFFGazette.com<\/a>),\u00a0Trachtenberg was asked about his\u00a0endgame. “In my mind, what made Avengers work was that it wasn\u2019t the first MCU movie and it wasn\u2019t the second MCU movie,” he shared. “That we had spent time bonding with characters and their individual stories and making sure that those individual movies were cool and had interesting premises unto themselves.”<\/p>\n

“So if we were to ever do something where things collide, it would be after we\u2019ve gotten to know and bonded with things in their own individual stories.”<\/p>\n

When the site pointed out that many fans call him the “Kevin Feige” of the Predator franchise,\u00a0Trachtenberg replied, “I take that as a compliment because I think Kevin Feige is a genius and what he created is unprecedented in the history of cinema. I\u2019ve just made a couple of good Predator movies so far, and hoping for a third. We\u2019ll see how that turns out.”<\/p>\n

In a separate conversation with\u00a0ScreenTime<\/a>,\u00a0Trachtenberg revealed that his original plan for Predator: Badlands was for\u00a0Amber Midthunder to reprise her Prey role as\u00a0Naru. That means she would have fought alongside the\u00a0Yautja Dek in place of\u00a0Elle Fanning’s\u00a0Weyland-Yutani synthetic,\u00a0Thia.<\/p>\n

“I did think about the pairing of [Amber Midthunder’s Naru and Dek] before it was Thia,” he told the site.\u00a0“But then I thought, ‘Well, now then I’m not doing the premise.’ And I really wanted to do the premise of the Predator as the protagonist, and no humans in the movie. And so it became further down the line we can do some cooler things, maybe [with Naru].”<\/p>\n

Only time will tell what becomes of the Predator franchise, and much is likely riding on how much of a success Badlands is when it opens later this week. Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers bypassed theaters for a streaming release on Hulu, so the movie\u00a0will be a big\u00a0test for this current iteration of the long-running sci-fi series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We still don’t have opening weekend estimates, though a recent report<\/a> pointed to Predator: Badlands being a box office hit.<\/p>\n

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

Dan Trachtenberg directs and produces\u00a0Predator: Badlands\u00a0alongside John Davis, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, and Brent O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

Predator: Badlands\u00a0opens exclusively in movie theaters on November 7 in IMAX, Dolby Cinema, Cinemark XD, 4DX, ScreenX, and premium screens everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Predator: Badlands arrives in theaters this Friday, but many fans already have one eye on the future. Filmmaker\u00a0Dan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,42603,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-243969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-predator-badlands","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}