Surprise! According to Steve Asbell, the head of Disney-owned 20th Century Studios, Predator Badlands isn’t the only Predator film releasing in 2025. Oh, and we might get another Alien Vs. Predator film, too.
Back in August, it was reported that the next Predator movie was already filming. That movie’s existence has been confirmed since and we now know that Predator Badlands will hit theaters next year. The film is being directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who also directed 2022’s Prey, a fantastic Hulu-exclusive Predator sequel. So we know Trachtenberg is doing Badlands, but apparently before that releases, he has a surprise, different Predator film that might be an animated anthology.
In an October 24 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Asbell answered a host of questions about upcoming 20th Century projects, like Avatar, Alien, and even Speed 3. But the most interesting bit of news was the confirmation that a secret, previously unknown Predator movie is going to arrive sometime next year before Badlands.
“After Prey became a success, Dan [Trachtenberg] came back and said he didn’t want to do Prey 2,” said Asbell, “And we’re like, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he rattled off a bunch of ideas that were really crazy but really cool.”
“We’ve actually done two of them. Two are coming out next year. One I can’t talk about yet, but the other one is the live-action Predator film with Elle Fanning that just wrapped in New Zealand. That’ll be out theatrically sometime next year. It’s titled Badlands and it is an absolutely bonkers idea. It is a sci-fi thing, but it’s not what everybody thinks it is. And I mean, it’s awesome. It is so nuts. But in Dan, we trust.”
Asbell didn’t say much about the other Predator movie, but did suggest it won’t be released in theaters and confirmed Tractenberg also directed it.
An animated Predator movie and more AVP
On Friday, IO9 further reported that they had heard from sources that the surprise Predator movie is an animated anthology featuring three different stories involving different warriors throughout history fighting Predators. One is possibly about pirates, one is reportedly about samurai, and no details were shared about the third story. Disney didn’t provide a comment to the outlet before publication.
Still, an animated Predator anthology about various warriors from the past taking on the intergalactic bounty hunter sounds similar to Prey and would likely be something released only on Hulu and not in theaters, which lines up with what Asbell told THR.
Meanwhile, in that same interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 20th Century Studios boss also said it was likely we would eventually get another Alien Vs Predator movie, but “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,” explained Asbell. “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.”
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