Badlands’ Dan Trachtenberg Never Set Out to Make an ‘Alien’ Crossover – Here’s How Weyland-Yutani Got “Sucked In”

In 2022, the world saw the heights filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg could reach with an iconic horror sci-fi like Predator in his prequel feature, Prey. This year, his follow-up, an animated anthology, Predator: Killer of Killers, not only expanded the universe in massive ways, but it dropped exciting Easter eggs in the lead-up to his third exploration of the franchise, the theatrically released (finally) Predator: Badlands, starring Elle Fanning.

In his interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Trachtenberg says, “I’m so smitten with tethering an audience to a protagonist and really seeing the world through their eyes,” and in Badlands, that’s exactly what the director does with New Zealand actor Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. Through the eyes of Dek (Schuster-Koloamatangi), a young Yautja, fans are introduced to what Fanning’s android, Thia, calls “the most dangerous planet in the universe” to prove himself a worthy warrior. In addition to Schuster-Koloamatangi and Fanning, Badlands also stars Michael Homak, Reuben de Jong, and Rohinal Nayaran.

The Predator franchise has taken us far from Earth before, but never quite like Trachtenberg, whose Killer of Killers and Badlands not only set off into the stars, but into the furthest reaches of time. The time period of Badlands, he explains in this conversation, is part of a larger design, as is the inclusion of Alien‘s Weyland-Yutani synthetics, Thia and Tessa (Fanning), a detail that initially sparked a lot of Alien vs. Predator buzz. Trachtenberg also teases an idea he’s excited about for another Predator movie, shares details on his original ideas for Dek and why those had to change, and discusses what about this iconic creature drew him to becoming one of the franchise’s greatest champions.

‘Badlands’ Is Not a Predator Origins Story

Though we would be sat for a movie about “Senate trade agreements between the different Yautja tribes.”

Image via 20th Century Studios

PERRI NEMIROFF: Because I love hearing about how ideas evolve along the way, when you first wrapped Prey, at that point, what did you think your next live-action story in the Predator franchise would look like, and how does that compare to what Badlands turned out to be?

DAN TRACHTENBERG: Killer of Killers and Badlands came kind of at the same time, and it was sort of like, “Well, which one would I want to make first?” Also, in fairness, there was a third idea that I’m not speaking to, but they were all equally like, “Oh my gosh, wait a second.” The fun thing wasn’t just that, “That would be so cool. A Predator movie hasn’t done that yet,” but also, all of science fiction hasn’t had a movie like this. So, that’s why I was sort of anxious to make it and why we did two at the same time. I didn’t want to wait for one to happen after the other.

One particular thing that you do in this movie can often be a risk — having an iconic villain, and then essentially explaining them away. It winds up taking away from the fear factor and the intensity of a character. Can you walk me through deciding that a Predator character would benefit from that, and also, if you put any thought into how your movie would kind of retroactively change how people view Predator characters in other films?

TRACHTENBERG: I think even the original Predator, what was so refreshing about it and exciting was we had just been in the glut of Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, and then here comes a slasher movie where the antagonist had intelligence, had skill, had culture — you could glean from what it was wearing — and it had a code. Nowhere in any of those other movies could you imagine them disarming themselves and deciding to fight their prey, or their victim, toe to toe, mano a mano, with honor, but that was all instinctually a part of the Predator concept. I just wanted to take full advantage of what was there and very carefully just open the door a little bit wider. I knew it would be a trap to go fully deep dive in and have it be “Predator: Origins” or be more lore-focused than story-focused, or make a movie about the Senate trade agreements between the different Yautja tribes. So, now you have just enough to understand the circumstances that Dek is faced with, and then he’s thrust into this gauntlet.

Dan Trachtenberg Didn’t Set Out to Make an ‘Alien Vs. Predator’ Movie

“The vortex of the narrative sucked it in.”

Image via 20th Century Studios

The way you describe that kind of leans into the Weyland-Yutani question I had, because, admittedly, when I first heard you were incorporating that corporation into your movie, I’m like, “Uh oh, let’s not complicate it too much.” But I thought it was worked in so simply and so naturally. Can you tell me about the moment when you figured out that including Weyland-Yutani would benefit the story you wanted to tell, but also give me an example of figuring out where to draw the line, something you wanted to include about the corporation that made you think, “This might be going a little too far, and I’ve got to rein it in?”

TRACHTENBERG: Well, I think it feels so organic and natural to this story because we didn’t have the idea of, “Oh, Weyland-Yutani! Let’s put that in the movie.” It came from not wanting to include any humans in the movie, and then deciding on a story of a monster and a robot, how cool that would be, and then realizing, “I know a company that makes robots that we can actually include.” So, it came to the story. The vortex of the narrative sucked it in, as opposed to us trying to jam it in.

What was challenging was time period because we are set so far in the future, purposefully, so that we didn’t step on the toes of whatever Fede [Álvarez] was doing, or, of course, whatever Noah Hawley was doing, and yet still wanted things to feel Weyland-Yutani, and the thing that makes it feel Weyland-Yutani is a lot of, like, MS-DOS-style prompts and analog buttons and features. So, walking the line between it feeling furthest in the future that we’ve seen them, yet also has some qualities that feel tethered to those aesthetic ideas in the franchise, was a challenge.

Designing Dek: The Runt Who Redefines What a Predator Can Be

The director reveals the original backstory of this Yautja warrior.

Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Leaning in to Dek a little now, when you first came up with that character, what did you picture him looking like initially, and what kind of tools did you think you would need to use in order to bring him to life, and how does that ultimately compare to how you all went about it and what he looks like in the finished film?

TRACHTENBERG: The main aesthetic difference was when we first started out, I thought what made him a runt was going to be that he was blind. I was thinking a lot about Blind Fury with Rutger Hauer and The Book of Eli, which is kick-ass, and thought that would be the exciting thing, to see this runt of the litter that has to compensate. He was going to use the clicks with a mask that he had made himself as a form of echolocation to embrace the Predator vision in a new way.

But as we started developing the movie, and we were developing Genna, and I’m so smitten with tethering an audience to a protagonist and really seeing the world through their eyes, that did not go with a character who’s blind. That would tempt me, filmmaking-wise, to actually not see certain things. So, I abandoned that, and that was a huge design layer of it. I truly thought when we first started that it would be a totally prosthetic build once again, and we did tests with Alec Gillis in the very beginning, and even he came up and said, “I do not think we can do what this movie needs this way.” And then the movie became this awesome handhold between Alec and Wētā Workshop to physically build the suit, as well as Wētā Digital and countless other VFX houses, to create a VFX rendition of the face. Dimitrius [Schuster-Koloamatangi] is still in a full-body prosthetic suit. We still wanted to honor the franchise, but we needed the nuances and the range that only we can get now with visual effects to take over in certain areas.

Dan Trachtenberg’s Next Predator Movie Will Go Where No Sci-Fi Has Gone Before

After three wildly different takes on the franchise, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

I’ll end with one question that makes me feel like a jerk, because one, I don’t want to box you into the Predator franchise, but also, this movie hasn’t even come out yet! But, I see what you do with these movies, and I see endless creative possibilities, so it does leave me wondering, what is an unexplored corner of the Predator franchise that you think would be most creatively fulfilling for you to explore next?

TRACHTENBERG: There are now so many ways in which we can explore it — in the animated setting, in the live-action setting. There are so many different characters that we can pursue in some ways, different times we could go to, but also different kinds of places we can go to that we’ve never seen. There are certain kinds of journeys that we’ve never seen a sci-fi franchise take on, and some of those are the most exciting for me.

Predator: Badlands is in theaters now.

Release Date

November 5, 2025

Runtime

107 minutes

Director

Dan Trachtenberg

Writers

Dan Trachtenberg, Patrick Aison, John Thomas, Jim Thomas

Producers

Brent O’Connor, John Davis, Marc Toberoff, Dan Trachtenberg, Ben Rosenblatt

Franchise(s)

Predator

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  Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi

  Dek / Father