Last Updated on June 10, 2025 by Angel Melanson
It appears there may be a new cinematic universe brewing at Disney, one that doesn’t have Marvel attached to it. The studio is currently in the midst of releasing new movies in both the Alien and Predator franchises. Fede Alvarez is getting ready to make a sequel to Alien: Romulus, while Dan Trachtenberg is delivering not one but two different Predator movies this year as follow-ups to his much beloved 2022 entry in the series, Prey. Trachtenberg may be up to something a bit more there though.
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Put on your tinfoil hats gang, it’s time to make a corkboard full of all the evidence we currently have that suggests both the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, which is now streaming on Hulu, and the live-action Predator: Badlands, which hits theaters later this year, take place in the Alien universe. To be clear, this isn’t purely speculative and there is a surprising amount of evidence to support that this is indeed happening.
A brief bit of history. Fox produced a pair of Alien vs. Predator movies in the early 2000s. The first was reasonably successful, but Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, less so. Neither were critical darlings, to put it nicely, so the idea was put to bed. Many of the AvP comics, however, are cherished by fans, so there’s certainly something to be explored there.
Cut to 2024 when 20th Century Studios head Steve Asbell was discussing the future of the company. When asked about a new Alien vs. Predator movie, he had a pretty interesting response.
“It wouldn’t be in the way you think. That’s the thing. Not in the way that it will just be called Alien vs. Predator or anything like the original movies. If we do this, they’ll be organically created out of these two franchises that we’ve continued with characters that we fall in love with and those characters will combine…perhaps. But we haven’t gotten to that point. And we’re not just going to bang it out.”
So what we’re looking at probably isn’t AvP. Rather, we could be looking at stories where both of these legendary spacebound creatures share the same space, allowing for all sorts of tales to be told.
While promoting the release of Alien: Romulus last year, Alvarez was also asked about a new AvP movie and he was open to the idea, pitching a team-up with Trachtenberg, likening it to when Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have teamed up with one another in the past.
“Maybe we should do like Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did with From Dusk Till Dawn. We’ll do that. I direct one half, he directs the other half. There you go. That’s the pitch.”
Crucially, nobody actually building out these franchises right now is shooting down the idea of a universe in which Xenomorphs and Yautja coexist. That brings us to the present. Predator: Killer of Killers, directed by Trachtenberg and Josh Wassung, opens up the universe by telling several stories across various time periods, while also opening up a world of possibilities for the future.
While we won’t get into full-on spoiler territory here, in the trailer for Killer of Killers, there is a hulking Predator with a very interesting cape. It has been theorized that this cape is actually made of Xenomorph tails. See for yourself in the above image.
That’s exhibit A when it comes to real world evidence. Exhibit B is, perhaps, far more compelling. The trailer for Predator: Badlands, which arrives in August, offered up our first look at Elle Fanning’s character. Eagle-eyed viewers took note of a Weyland-Yutani logo that appeared in her eye. Yes, it seems that Fanning is playing an android from the Alien universe. Check it out.
That’s pretty compelling and difficult to ignore. We’ll probably know a whole lot more once that movie actually hits theaters. I recently had the good fortune of speaking with Trachtenberg in honor of Killer of Killers and you can check out the full interview here. When I brought up the Weyland-Yutani logo in Fanning’s eye, Trachtenberg merely said “yes.” Then, I asked about the Xenomorph tails theory and he was far less willing to confirm or deny anything.
“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.”
So there we have it. It’s hard to say where this is all going to go but it seems very much like Alvarez and Trachtenberg get along, they both are making critically embraced, hit movies in these respective franchises and the head of 20th Century Studios has certainly suggested that an Alien/Predator universe could be in the cards. We’ve got big breadcrumbs to follow in these new movies and at this point, it feels more like a matter of how this is going to happen, rather than if it’s going to happen. We shall see.
Predator: Killer of Killers is streaming now on Hulu. For more, get a full breakdown of the brand new Godzilla Kai-Sei Era.
