Nearly 40 years since the release of the original Predator in 1987, it feels like these movies are getting a new lease on life. Much of that is owed to director Dan Trachtenberg, who delivered one of the series’ best, most inventive entries in 2022 with Prey. Now, Trachtenberg is back with an animated anthology centered on the deadliest hunters in the galaxy in the form of Predator: Killer of Killers, which serves as yet another bold expansion of the long-running franchise.
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“After Prey I was trying to figure out, what the heck would I do for a sequel?” Trachtenberg told me during a recent interview on behalf of Killer of Killers, which hits Hulu on June 6. “Sometimes people make a cool movie and then the sequel is just a sequel to the cool movie. Not a cool movie in and of itself. I was really racking my brains, what would be, not just the next minute of this story we just told, but actually what has not been done in the franchise before?”
That ultimately led Trachtenberg to the live-action Predator: Badlands which hits theaters later this year and, unlike Prey, takes place in the far future. Still, the filmmaker had other ideas that he wanted to explore in this universe. “What else could we do time period wise?” he mused.
Enter Killer of Killers. Trachtenberg co-directed the anthology alongside John Wassung, marking his feature directorial debut. Trachtenberg and Wassung had worked together many times before. Wassung and his company The Third Floor had done lots of visual effects work, specifically pre-visualization. “He was like, ‘Dude, I know we just do pre-viz but I really think me and the company here are ready to do a finished project,” Trachtenberg explained. “I love me an underdog story and they showed me some tests that they had done. They were incredible. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Animation. Okay. What if we do Predator animated?’”
That was the idea that cracked it, which allowed Trachtenberg to explore multiple ideas he’d had while wondering what he should do after Prey. The result is an anthology that sees humans from three different time periods encountering Predators, aka Yautja. There’s a Viking raider guiding her young son on a bloody quest for revenge, a ninja in feudal Japan who turns against his Samurai brother in a brutal battle for succession and a WWII pilot who takes to the sky to investigate an otherworldly threat to the Allied cause.
“We worked really hard, really, really rapidly,” Wassung said. “We did pre-viz for the movie while he was working on the script.” They were able to get the movie in decent shape, with several internal screenings at the studio, before Trachtenberg had to leave to actually begin filming Badlands in New Zealand. Even so, they stayed in touch frequently, even as Trachtenberg was neck deep in production on a live-action blockbuster. “We had a trust because we worked together for years,” Wassung said.
When it came to the look of the film, the filmmakers had to figure out how to take this world that has always existed in live-action and translate it to animation. As Wassung explained, they used concept artists as their inspiration in bridging that gap.
“Both Dan and I were inspired by concept artists, because concept artists are the amazing artists behind the scenes in almost every big sci-fi movie. They always have these incredible paintings. Even on Prey, there was this really gorgeous artwork. That, combined with this other lore, our inspiration was to take that style or artwork and put it on screen, then set it in motion.”
“If you could pause it at any point in time, it should really feel like you’re looking at a painting, Wassung added.
Without giving anything away, Killer of Killers manages to connect these stories in some pretty wild, unexpected ways, expanding the scope of the Predator universe as we know it. “It’s not just one story, it’s not just three stories, it’s something even more,” Trachtenberg said. “The entire crew loved making this movie start to finish,” Wassung said. “I think that we could all just feel that it was something special.”
One thing that some have wondered, thanks to some visuals in the trailers for Killer of Killers and Badlands, is if Trachtenberg is laying the groundwork for a Predator/Alien cinematic universe of sorts. In Killer of Killers, one of the Predators is wearing a cape made of bones that some have theorized might be Xenomorph tails. When asked about it, Trachtenberg played coy.
“What I think is really cool about the design of the warlord Predator is he’s the biggest one we’ve seen. He’s got a cape made of bones and the face mask he’s wearing is actually a Yautja skull, another Predator skull that he’s wearing, being the top dog. I love that design and I think what people are seeing as Xenomorph might actually be Predator or other species.”
What about the future of the franchise beyond this film? “We need to give Dan just a little bit more time to finish Badlands because he’s still working so hard on that movie but yes, we are definitely talking about it,” Wassung said regarding a possible follow-up to Killer of Killers. “We would love to explore what happens next.”
“I had a bunch of big ideas when I finished Prey, I would love to get to all of them,” Trachtenberg said. “There’s definitely a plan in mind, but the movie has to do well. So, we’ll see.” Those hoping for something akin to Prey 2 also shouldn’t let that hope die just yet. “The third story, which I can’t speak to yet, is what would happen with Nadu,” Trachtenberg teased.
Look for Predator: Killer of Killers on Hulu June 6. For more, get the lowdown on the new Turok video game coming our way.
