Nobody’s going to argue that John McTiernan’s original is the finest the franchise has had to offer so far, but there’s definitely an opening for Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey to comfortably establish itself as at least the second-best Predator movie ever made when it comes exclusively to Hulu next summer.
Stephen Hopkins’ Predator 2 has plenty of fans and endures as a cult favorite, Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal’s Predators definitely deserved the sequel it didn’t get, while behind the scenes reports indicated that there was a much better version of Shane Black’s The Predator before extensive reshoots and a heavy edit yielded middling results.
A period piece that sees a young Native American warrior go toe-to-toe with an intergalactic bounty hunter without even the merest shred of technology is an enticing prospect, and star Amber Midthunder has shared her excitement at leading Prey on her Instagram account, as you can see below.
Trachtenberg had been developing the project that ultimately became Prey for years before the news was made public, and taking the long-running sci-fi action franchise back to basics and stripping away everything fans have come to expect is an ingenious way with which to reinvigorate a property that’s been struggling to maintain relevance in the eyes of modern audiences.