As a part of the Disney+ Day festivities, the House of Mouse has announced some big news for the next Predator movie. The feature, which is officially titled Prey, is set to drop on Hulu in the summer of 2022. It had been shooting under the working title Skulls, leading to reports that the movie would be released under that title, but it’s now confirmed to be Prey.
From 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison (Kingdom, Jack Ryan), Prey serves as a prequel, taking place 300 years before the main Predator series. It follows Naru (Amber Midthunder), a skilled warrior who fiercely protects her tribe as an alien Predator hunts them. The project was revealed to have wrapped filming in September by director of photography Jeff Cutter on Instagram.
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“And that’s a wrap on Skulls!” Cutter wrote in the caption, referring to the working title. “Can’t thank [Trachtenberg] enough for inviting me along on this epic journey and entrusting me to help achieve his vision for this film! and much love to a brave Calgary crew for diving headfirst in with us!”
“It goes back to what made the original Predator movie work,” producer John Davis said of Prey in a previous Collider interview. “It’s the ingenuity of a human being who won’t give up, who’s able to observe and interpret, basically being able to beat a stronger, more powerful, well-armed force.”
Teasing this installment to be right up there with the original, Davis added, “It’s going to be, I believe, the second best - or the first… or it may be equal to the first one. Right? I feel like the first one was a wonderful, interesting movie, and I know what worked about it. I feel like we kind of never got back there again. We ended up in different places. I think this is a worthy complement to the first one. It’s going to be as good.”
This will mark the fifth installment of the Predator movie series. It all began with the hit original released in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead. After achieving immense success, the movie spawned the popular franchise that’s still ongoing to this day. Previous years have seen the releases of Predator 2 in 1990, Predators in 2010, and The Predator in 2018. It has also launched the crossover Alien vs. Predator series and has expanded into other mediums, from video games to comic books.
Prey is set to be released on Hulu in Summer 2020. An exact date is yet to be named. The news that the movie will be heading straight to streaming comes as a bit of a surprise, though streamers have been shelling out more and more money in recent years to nab the rights to big-name releases. It also doesn’t help that The Predator from director Shane Black didn’t meet the studio expectations in terms of both box office performance and critical acclaim when it was released in 2018. Perhaps Predator may find more success on the small screen. This news comes to us from The Hollywood Reporter.