Our first look atPreyhas been revealed by way of some new concept art released by 20th Century on Friday. The teases the web shortly after the news broke thatPredator 5has been officially titled asPreywith plans to release on Hulu in 2022. The artwork gives us a peek at the movie’s lead character, Amber Midthunder’s Naru, with a Predator lurking in the fog behind her. Another photo features the movie’sPreytitle with the classicPredatorfont.
Preyis a prequel to the franchise, going back to the beginning to reveal the visit to Earth by a certain extra-terrestrial menace. Set in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago, the prequel follows Naru, a “skilled warrior who fiercely protects her tribe against ahighly evolved alien predator.” Putting the Predator in an entirely new setting is intended to help make the franchise fresh again, and producer John Davis has even teased that this new movie is on par with the beloved original.
“It’s going to be, I believe, the second best – or the first… or it may be equal to the first one. Right?” David told Collider. “I feel like the first one was a wonderful, interesting movie and I know what worked about it. I feel like we kind of never got back there again. We ended up in different places.I think this is a worthy complement to the first one. It’s going to be as good.”
Davis also said, “It goes back to what made the originalPredatormovie work. It’s the ingenuity of a human being who won’t give up, who’s able to observe and interpret, basically being able to beat a stronger, more powerful, well-armed force.”
Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) directsPreyusing a screenplay by Patrick Aison (Kingdom). For a while, the project was shooting under the working title ofSkulls, in part because Trachtenberg was trying to conceal that this was a newPredatormovie. When that cat was out of the bag, Trachtenberg still held back on divulging any details, and it wasn’t clear if this would be a followup to Shane Black’sThe Predator. We now know that this prequel instead takes us centuries in the past.
It’s unclear if the movie will be given an R rating, but Davis has suggested that the studio could have it trimmed down just enough to get a PG-13 rating. Perhaps now that it’s set its sights on a streaming home at Hulu, there won’t be as much of a focus on censoring the content for a softer rating. In any case, it will be interesting to see how this franchise does moving forward in a totally different time period, even if it means there’s no chance original star Arnold Schwarzenegger will have a surprise cameo as Dutch.
Preywill be released onHuluin the summer of 2022. An exact release date hasn’t yet been announced. The news aboutPreycomes out along with plenty of other big projects in the works associated with Disney forDisney+Day.
