“Predator: Badlands” Director On Cut Cameos

While most of Dan Trachtenberg’s “Predator: Badlands” takes place on a deadly planet named Genna, the earliest part of the film unfolds on the Predator homeworld of Yautja Prime.

In those scenes, the main character of outcast runt Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) must pick a planet from a list of candidates to serve as a proving ground for his hunting skills, with Genna being the most deadly.

It turns out the sequence originally ran a little longer and featured more planets – including ties to the franchise and to the post-credits scene in the animated “Predator: Killer of Killers” film in which Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch, Danny Glover’s Mike Harrigan and Amber Midthunder’s Naru were being kept in cold storage on Yautja Prime.

Speaking with Screen Rant recently, Trachtenberg confirmed that references (visual and vocal) to them, the “Alien” xenomorph, and a major creature from ‘Killer of Killers’ were all scrapped. He says the scene “got truncated” to the point that audiences “could barely see” any of the characters – sacrificed to shorten an otherwise lengthy dialogue scene:

“They had a longer conversation, or they said the same idea of ‘Pick Your Planet,’ and all that stuff, but it was a little bit longer. So there were more holograms to be in the background. And what we have now is more soft focus in the foreground, you kind of see it and all that.

The thing we haven’t gotten in all the great sci-fi we’ve enjoyed over the years is that it’s the creatures, it’s their movie, that’s it, no humans. And then, I had other cool thoughts for what Naru could do in the future and was like, ‘Oh, that would be awesome for that.’ But I could feel it.

There’s definitely a version where you find Naru on that planet, and she has to [survive], and they meet. I could see that version and didn’t want to spend all the chips right away.”

As for where things stand, Trachtenberg says he’s been thinking about the franchise’s future:

“I’m in this zone of dreaming up more, like I said, as I had been previously. And then [a first look deal at] Paramount is this incredible opportunity to make original things that have been in my heart and mind for a long time. I’m thrilled to have a place to make them theatrically. And they also have some very cool IP that I could now get to think about, like, “Oh, what might I do with that?” So, it’s a simultaneous thing.”

“Predator: Badlands” earned $184.6 million at the worldwide box office, the best in the franchise to date, from a budget of $105 million. It hits 4K disc tomorrow.