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Predator (franchise)
American media franchise From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Predator is an American science fiction action horror anthology media franchise primarily centered on encounters between humans and a fictional species of extraterrestrial trophy hunters known as the Predators. Produced and distributed by 20th Century Studios, the series was initially conceived by screenwriters Jim and John Thomas. The series began with the film Predator (1987), directed by John McTiernan, and was followed by several sequels—Predator 2 (1990), Predators (2010), The Predator (2018), Prey (2022), Predator: Killer of Killers (2025), and Predator: Badlands (2025)—as well as a range of expanded universe media, including comic books, novels, and video games, including Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005) and Predator: Hunting Grounds (2020).
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Beginning with crossover comic books published in the 1990s under the Alien vs. Predator (AVP) imprint, the Predators later intersected with the Alien franchise, pitting the Predators against the titular Alien characters. This narrative convergence led to two theatrical crossover films—Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)—and the AVP series having its own associated expanded universe of tie-in novels, comics and video games.
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Premise
The Predator franchise centers on recurring storylines in which human characters encounter a technologically advanced extraterrestrial species that hunts other lifeforms for sport. These extraterrestrials—credited as Predators in the films and alternatively named Yautja,[1][2] Hish-Qu-Ten, and Skin Thieves in expanded universe media—serve as antagonists in largely self-contained narratives that blend military science fiction, action, and horror elements.
Although the films vary in setting, they typically follow a familiar structure: a group of humans, often military personnel or other combatants, find themselves targeted by a Predator during a mission or survival scenario. The creatures are portrayed as adhering to a ritualized code of conduct, selectively targeting dangerous opponents they deem worthy prey. Over time, expanded media introduced additional layers to the fictional mythology, including the species' social hierarchy, interstellar hunting culture, and internal rivalries.
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Background
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Predator was John McTiernan's first studio film as director. The studio hired screenplay writer Shane Black not only to play a supporting role in the film, but to keep an eye on McTiernan due to the director's inexperience.[3] Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the film's creature,[4] the idea being that the physical action star would use his martial arts skills to make the creature an agile, ninja-esque hunter. When compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Jesse Ventura, actors known for their bodybuilding regimes, it became apparent a more physically imposing man was needed to make the creature appear threatening. Eventually, Van Damme was removed from the film and replaced by the actor and mime artist Kevin Peter Hall.[5][6][7][8] A Van Damme easter egg was eventually featured in The Predator.[9]
The Yautja's design is credited to special effects artist Stan Winston. While flying to Japan with Aliens director James Cameron, Winston, who had been hired to design the Predator, was doing concept art on the flight. Cameron saw what he was drawing and said, "I always wanted to see something with mandibles", and Winston subsequently included them in his designs.[5] Schwarzenegger recommended Winston after his experience working on The Terminator.[10][11]
The film's creature was originally designed with a long neck, a dog-like head and a single eye. This design was abandoned when it became apparent that the jungle locations would make shooting the complex design too difficult. Originally, the studio contracted the makeup effects for the creature from Richard Edlund's Boss Film Creature Shop. However, with problems filming the creature in Mexico and attempts to create a convincing monster of Van Damme, wearing a very different body suit, failing, makeup effects responsibilities were given to Winston and his studio, R/Greenberg Associates. According to former Boss Film Creature Shop makeup supervisor Steve Johnson, the makeup failed because of an impractical design by McTiernan that included 12-inch-length (300 mm) extensions that gave the creature a backward bent satyr leg. The design did not work in the jungle locations. After six weeks of shooting in the jungles of Palenque, Mexico, the production had to shut down so that Winston could make the new creature. This took eight months and then filming resumed for five weeks.[8]
The clicking sound of the creature was provided by Peter Cullen. Despite his resolution not to voice any more monsters following injuries to his throat sustained during the ADR of King Kong, his agent convinced him to audition. The clicking sound was inspired by a mixture of the visual of the creature and his recollection of a dying horseshoe crab.[12]
R/Greenberg Associates created the film's optical effects, including the creature's ability to become invisible, its thermal vision point of view, its glowing blood, and the electric spark effects. The invisibility effect was achieved by having someone in a bright red suit (because it was the furthest opposite of the green of the jungle and the blue of the sky) the size of the creature. The take was then repeated without the actors using a 30% wider lens on the camera. When the two takes were combined optically, an outline of the alien could be seen with the background scenery bending around its shape. For the thermal vision, infrared film could not be used because it did not register in the range of body temperature wavelengths. The glowing blood was achieved by green liquid from chem-lite sticks used by campers. The electrical sparks were rotoscoped animation using white paper pin registered on portable light tables to black-and-white prints of the film frames. The drawings were composited by the optical crew for the finished effects.[13][14]
In an interview on Predator Special Edition, actor Carl Weathers said many of the actors would secretly wake up as early as 3 a.m. to work out before the day's shooting, in order to look "pumped" during the scene. Weathers also stated that he would act as if his physique was naturally given to him, and would work out only after all the other actors were nowhere to be seen. It was reported that actor Sonny Landham was so unstable on the set that a bodyguard was hired to protect other people from him.[15]
According to Schwarzenegger, filming was physically demanding as he had to swim in very cold water and spent three weeks covered in mud for the climactic battle with the creature. In addition, cast and crew endured freezing temperatures in the Mexican jungle that required heat lamps to be on all of the time. Schwarzenegger also faced the challenge of working with Kevin Peter Hall who could not see out of the mask, and had to rehearse his scenes with it off and then memorize where everything was.
The film was particularly successful and subsequently inspired a number of comic books, video games and popular anecdotes within the media. Schwarzenegger was asked to reprise his role in a Predator sequel, but was attached to Terminator 2: Judgment Day and could not accept the role. The character was rewritten from the developing sequel's script, and the sequel to Predator, directed by Stephen Hopkins, was scheduled for 1990.[16]
Due to excessive violence and nudity scenes, Predator 2 was the first film to be given the newly instituted NC-17 rating in the United States. It was eventually rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America after being re-cut to its final theatrical length.[17] The film cast Danny Glover in the lead role, and Kevin Peter Hall reprised his role as the Predator. Also, returning to the role of Anna in the sequel, Elpidia Carrillo was slated to be in two scenes but was cut back to a brief appearance on a video screen in the government agents' surveillance trailer. Her character is showing damage to the Central American jungle caused by the explosion at the conclusion of the first film.[citation needed]
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Films
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Predator (1987)
An elite paramilitary rescue team, led by Major Dutch is on a covert operation in a Central American jungle where they are tasked with rescuing an official and his aide from guerrillas when they encounter a highly dangerous extraterrestrial with futuristic technology who hunts them for sport and are forced to find a way to defeat it before it kills off the entire team while awaiting a helicopter rescue.
Predator 2 (1990)
In the record-hot summer of 1997, a different Predator arrives in Los Angeles and hunts violent gang members, drawing the attention of the local police force, specifically Lieutenant Harrigan, who pursues the creature as it rampages throughout the city. The creature itself is in turn being hunted by the secretive government task-force OWLF, led by CIA agent Peter Keyes, which wishes to capture it for study.
Predators (2010)
A group of notorious mercenaries and murderers find themselves kidnapped and transported to an extraterrestrial game preserve jungle planet, where they have to learn to work together in order to fight off a band of Super Predators and other creatures stalking them and find a way off this world.
The Predator (2018)
After witnessing the crash of a Predator spaceship on Earth and hiding some of the remains, US Army Ranger Quinn McKenna and a team of PTSD-afflicted soldiers must take down a pair of Predators, including a new enhanced Predator which was genetically enhanced by its species. The Predator canon is expanded by distinguishing multiple types and purposes of the Predator species.
Prey (2022)
Naru, a skilled Comanche warrior, is striving to prove herself as a hunter, and finds herself having to protect her people from a Predator as well as from French fur traders who are destroying the Buffalo her people rely on for survival. Through multiple close encounters, gains enough knowledge about the Predator and kills it alone, finally proving herself to her tribe.
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
An anthology showing the Yautja hunting humans in different time periods.
Predator: Badlands (2025)
Dek is a Yautja runt from Yautja Prime, who seeks approval from his father, clan leader Njohrr. He vows to hunt the Kalisk, a seemingly unkillable apex predator on the "death planet" Genna. Upon crash-landing on Genna, Dek faces numerous environmental dangers from both flora and fauna. He reluctantly allies with Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani Corporation android, whose team was destroyed while attempting to capture the Kalisk.
Crossover series
Inspired by the Dark Horse Comics series, the filmmakers of Predator 2 (1990) incorporated an easter egg in which an Alien skull was seen in a Predator trophy case. Expansions upon this shared universe between the Alien and Predator franchises followed through comics and video games, leading up to the launch of a film franchise with the release of Alien vs. Predator in 2004, followed by Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in 2007. The franchise has spawned various comics, novels, video games, and other merchandise based upon or inspired by the films. A third film has been variously rumored since the production of Requiem.[18][19][20] In mid-2018, Shane Black, the director of The Predator, expressed his belief that a third Alien vs. Predator could still happen, indicating the studio's interest in both franchises.[21]
In August 2024, Fede Álvarez, the director of Alien: Romulus, also said he was open to directing a third Alien vs. Predator film, proposing to Melanie Brooks and Anthony D'Alessandro of Deadline Hollywood that he would enjoy directing it along with Dan Trachtenberg, the director of the Predator films Prey (2022) and Predator: Badlands (2025): "Maybe it's something I have to co-direct with my buddy Dan. Maybe we should do like [Quentin] Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did with [From] Dusk till Dawn. I'll direct a half, and he'll direct another half."[22] In October of the same year, Steve Asbell (President of Fox Studios) stated that the studio has plans to eventually develop an Alien and Predator crossover film.[23]
The Weyland-Yutani Corporation featured in the Alien franchise along with their particular android model featured in Alien: Romulus appears in the upcoming Predator: Badlands film as a stepping stone towards a third Alien vs. Predator film.[24] In April 2025, journalist Jeff Sneider reported that there is a Predator included in the script for the Romulus sequel, which would mark another step towards laying the groundwork for a third crossover film.[25] In October 2025, Trachtenberg stated in an interview with IGN that Predator: Badlands is set in the farthest future after the events of all the previous Alien and Alien vs. Predator films and the Alien: Earth TV-series so as to avoid any potential continuity conflicts, considering Romulus and Earth were still in production when Badlands was being produced.[26]
Alien vs. Predator (2004)
In 2004, a Predator mothership arrives in Earth orbit to draw humans to an ancient Predator training ground on Bouvetøya, an island about one thousand miles north of Antarctica. A buried pyramid giving off a "heat bloom" attracts a group of explorers led by billionaire and self-taught engineer Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen), the original founder and CEO of Weyland Industries, who unknowingly activates an Alien egg production line as a hibernating Alien Queen is awakened within the pyramid. Three Predators descend to the planet and enter the structure, killing all humans in their way with the intention of hunting the newly formed Aliens, while the scattered explorers are captured alive by Aliens and implanted with embryos. Two Predators die in the ensuing battle with an Alien, while the third allies itself with the lone surviving human, Alexa "Lex" Woods (Sanaa Lathan), while making their way out of the pyramid as it is destroyed by the Predator's wrist bomb and eventually does battle with the escaped Alien Queen on the surface. The Queen is defeated by being dragged down by a water tower into the dark depths of the frozen sea, but not before she fatally wounds the last Predator. The orbiting Predator mothership uncloaks and the crew retrieves the fallen Predator. A Predator elder gives Lex a spear as a sign of respect, and then departs. Once in orbit it is revealed that an Alien Chestburster was present within the corpse, thus a predator/alien hybrid is born.
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Set immediately after the events of the previous film, the Predalien hybrid aboard the Predator scout ship, having just separated from the mothership shown in the previous film, has grown to full adult size and sets about killing the Predators aboard the ship, causing it to crash in the small town of Gunnison, Colorado. The last surviving Predator activates a distress beacon containing a video recording of the Predalien, which is received by a veteran Predator on the Predator homeworld, who sets off towards Earth to "clean up" the infestation. When it arrives, the Predator tracks the Aliens into a section of the sewer below the town. He removes evidence of their presence as he moves along using a corrosive blue liquid and uses a laser net to try to contain the creatures, but the Aliens still manage to escape into the town above. The Predator fashions a plasma pistol from its remaining plasma caster and hunts Aliens all across town, accidentally cutting the power to the town in the process. During a confrontation with human survivors, the Predator loses its plasma pistol. The Predator then fights the Predalien singlehandedly, and the two mortally wound one another just as the US Air Force drops a tactical nuclear bomb on the town, incinerating both combatants along with the Predalien's warriors and hive, as well as the few remaining humans in the town. The salvaged plasma pistol is then taken to a Ms. Yutani of the Yutani Corporation, foreshadowing an advancement in technology leading to the future events of the Alien films.
Future
In 2025, Trachtenberg stated he had three initial Predator films in mind to make: Predator: Killer of Killers, Predator: Badlands, and a third that he intends to direct if Badlands is successful.[27] Discussions are ongoing with original franchise star Arnold Schwarzenegger about reprising his role as Dutch in a future installment.[28] In a January 2023 interview, Prey star Amber Midthunder said the cast of that film was in talks with Trachtenberg for a sequel.[29]
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Short films
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On October 19, 2010, Predators was released on home video and included the two prequel short films Moments of Extraction and Crucified, along with the prequel short film The Chosen, which had aired as a television and cinema advertisement prior to the release of Predators.[30] Loot Crate (commonly known for producing and distributing various officially licensed merchandise based on the Alien, Predator, Alien vs. Predator, and Prometheus brands) released a VR 360° short film titled Predator vs. Colonial Marines in February 2016, directed by Julian Higgins and written by Peter Weidman in which a troop of Colonial Marines storm a Weyland-Yutani warehouse and encounter the deadly alien hunter.[31][32] The Predator was released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD formats on December 18, 2018, in America, alongside the short stop-motion film The Predator Holiday Special, in which Santa Claus and his elves and reindeer encounter the Predators at the North Pole.[33]
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Cast and crew
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Principal cast
List indicators
This section includes characters who will appear or have appeared in the film series.
- An empty grey cell indicates the character was not in the film, or that the character's official presence has not yet been confirmed.
- C indicates a cameo role.
- U indicates an uncredited appearance.
- V indicates a voice-only role.
- Y indicates a younger version of the character.
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Additional production and crew details
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Reception
Box office performance
Critical and public response
- This film was released on streaming services; CinemaScore only provides ratings for films released in theaters.
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Music
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Home media
Other media
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Novels
Several novelizations based upon the movies have been released.
Movie novelizations
- Predator by Paul Monette, Jove Books, June 1, 1987, ISBN 0-515-09002-6
- Predator 2 by Simon Hawke, Jove Books, December 1990, ISBN 0-515-10578-3
- The Predator: Hunters and Hunted by James A. Moore, Titan Books, July 31, 2018 ISBN 978-1785658051
- The Predator by Christopher Golden & Mark Morris, Titan Books, September 2018, ISBN 978-1785658051
Original novels
- Predator: Concrete Jungle by Nathan Archer
- Predator: Cold War by Nathan Archer
- Predator: Big Game by Sandy Schofield
- Predator: Forever Midnight by John Shirley
- Predator: Flesh and Blood by Michael Jan Friedman
- Predator: Turnabout by Steve Perry
- Predator: South China Sea by Jeff VanderMeer
- Predator: Prey to the Heavens by John Arcudi and Javier Saltares
- The Predator: Hunters and Hunted by James A. Moore
- Predator: Stalking Shadows by James A. Moore
Comic books
Dark Horse Comics published various lines based on the franchise. The Fire and Stone (2014–2015) and Life and Death (2016–2017) series further explored what happened in the Alien, Predator, Alien vs. Predator, and Prometheus universe following the events of the 2012 film Prometheus. In July 2020, Marvel Comics announced that it had acquired the comic book rights to the Predator franchise, in addition to the rights to the Alien and Alien vs. Predator franchises,[65] publishing Predator (2022–present), Predator vs. Wolverine (2023), Predator vs. Black Panther (2024), Predator vs. Spider-Man, Predator: Black, White & Blood, and Predator Kills the Marvel Universe (all 2025).
Books
Other books expanding this fictional universe have been released through the years, and also such that depict the background to the films, including works by special effects company Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated (ADI) which has worked with the Alien, Predator and Alien vs. Predator films.
- Predator The Official Movie Special (2018)
- The Predator: The Art and Making of the Film (2018)
Video games
- Predator (1987)
- Predator 2 (1990)
- Predator 2 (1992)
- Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005)
- Predator: Hunting Grounds (2020)
Pinball
The Predators have appeared in two virtual pinball tables. The first one is a pinball adaptation of the first two Predator films, one of four pinball tables in the 1999 computer game Sci-Fi Pinball, with the other three tables being based on Aliens, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Fly, three other Fox horror films.[66] The second one is a loose pinball adaptation of Alien vs. Predator, developed by Zen Studios and available as an add-on pack for Zen Pinball 2, Pinball FX 2 and Pinball FX 3 on April 26, 2016.[67] Based on the premise and setting (though not the plot) of that film, this table is played entirely from the perspective of a Predator ascending the ranks to become a seasoned warrior and Alien hunter,[68] with two of the film's human leads being the table's announcers.
In the early 2010s, pinball manufacturer SKIT-B attempted to create an unauthorized physical pinball adaptation of the Predator franchise, without securing licensing rights from franchise owner 20th Century Fox. After suffering from legal problems, the pinball table was cancelled on March 24, 2015,[69] and thus, only a few prototypes of the pinball table exists to this day.
Card game
A card game, titled Legendary Encounters: A Predator Deck Building Game, was released in July 2015 by Upper Deck Company.[70] It is based on the first two films.[71]
Other appearances
- The Predator is a downloadable character in Mortal Kombat X (2015).[72]
- The Predator is a free challenging boss featured in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands.
- The Predator is an unlockable outfit and hostile NPC in Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter 2 Season 5.[73]
- The Predator was licensed by Adult Swim to officially appear[citation needed] in the 2023 seventh-season premiere of the animated series Rick and Morty, "How Poopy Got His Poop Back".
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See also
- Outline of science fiction
- List of films featuring extraterrestrials
- List of monster movies
- Predatoroonops, a genus of spider named in honor of the Predator
References
Bibliography
External links
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