In this wide-ranging conversation, filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg — the first three-time guest of BroBible’s Post Credit Podcast — discusses the director’s recent success with the Predator franchise, including his work on Prey and Predator: Badlands, explores the creative decisions behind the films, particularly regarding the Yautja culture and the use of cloaking technology, shares his approach to reinventing established franchises while staying true to their core elements.
Then, we discuss Dan’s new three-year first-look deal with Paramount and his plans for future projects, including a potential time travel crime film, his own No Country For Old Men, and the possibility of jumping into the Star Trek franchise before concluding with setting betting odds on a potential Alien vs. Predator rematch.
Predator: Badlands will be available 2/12 on Hulu and on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD 2/17.
Editors Note: this interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
THE PARAMOUNT DEAL AND WHAT’S NEXT
ERIC ITALIANO, BROBIBLE: Folks, today I am joined by Dan Trachtenberg, the first three-time guest on the show! The number three is actually relevant today because you just signed a three-year first look deal at Paramount, so congrats on that as well.
DAN: Thank you, appreciate it.
BROBIBLE: I know they keep this stuff secret on purpose, but are you thinking more sci-fi? Are you going to branch out? What’s next?
DAN: There is a big sci-fi project I’m very excited about. There are also things I’ve been developing for years that may finally get out into the world, as well as new ideas.
BROBIBLE: We’re both repped at Untitled. A few years ago, a little birdie told me you were looking for a crime film. I would love to see a Dan Trachtenberg crime movie. Are you still hunting for one?
DAN: Yes. I have a time travel crime movie I’ve been trying to make forever. And something in the vein of No Country, A History of Violence, Road to Perdition — that kind of film is something I’ve always wanted to do.
BUILDING THE TROPHY WALL
ERIC ITALIANO: Let’s talk about Predator: Badlands. The last time I spoke to you, the film wasn’t out. Now it is. Let’s break down the trophy wall. What’s up there? What was the big “aha” moment?
DAN: The skulls on the wall came partly from asking what we were allowed to use — what the studio owned. Between 20th and Disney, what could we legally put up there? Then creatively, what would be fun to imply as previous hunts? So it was a combination of ideas from me, concept artists, VFX producers — people saying, “What if this?” We realized we could suggest that the Harvester from Independence Day may have come into contact with them. There are also things people haven’t picked up on yet.
BROBIBLE: Are you confirming anything, or waiting like James Gunn did with that Guardians Easter egg that went unsolved for a decade?
DAN: I’ll wait. Many have been spotted, but no one has found all of them correctly. Everyone got the Harvester. A few have been misidentified. And there are a couple disguised well enough that no one’s figured them out yet.
THE FEMALE YAUTJA AND SEQUEL PLANS
BROBIBLE: If you made another sequel — your fourth Predator film — what would the plan be, especially regarding exploring a female Yautja? The suggestion felt like the mother is worse.
DAN: I can’t go too far down that road. But your assessment is accurate. The intention is that the mother is a fierce force — not unlike the Alien Queen.
BROBIBLE: Have we ever gotten an explicitly female Yautja?
DAN: Only in the comics.
BROBIBLE: Are you pulling from that or doing your own thing?
DAN: Often I think I’m having an original idea and someone tells me it was in the comics. But from what I’ve seen, the portrayals aren’t how I’d approach it. I want to avoid tropes — especially how female warriors are often handled in fantasy.
BROBIBLE: Specifically?
DAN: Design-wise. Over-stylized armor. Exaggeration. That feels outdated.
BROBIBLE: Right, like, Yautja knockers — we don’t need those. Uhm…. where was I…
DAN: [laughing] Yautja knockers…
BROBIBLE: Completely threw me! Okay…
REINVENTING PREDATOR
BROBIBLE: You’ve reinvented the franchise twice — first with the time period, then by making the Yautja the protagonist. How do you adapt a franchise without betraying what made it beloved?
DAN: I don’t know that what we’re doing could be done with every franchise. I think many, probably, but not every. I think there’s something specific about Predator as a concept that has allowed us to tell such thematically oriented stories.
What was so special about it in the ’87 movie was that it was not just a Zenomorph. It was not just a creature trying to kill, or eat, or terrorize. It wasn’t a Jason or a Michael Myers. It wasn’t what we typically saw in slasher movies, which is kind of the formula for the original film. It had an intelligence. It had a culture. It had all of these things. It didn’t come out and say it outright, but it behaved in a way — and was costumed in a way — that spoke to those other things.
It felt like, “Whoa, wait a second.” That wasn’t what I expected when the cloak came off, and then eventually the mask came off. What became clear throughout that film is that this thing is hunting. It is not just trying to kill out of anger or to feed. There’s some honor about it. It’s looking for the apex. It’s looking for the strongest thing to test itself against. And to take pride in collecting a trophy.
That notion allows for a lot of interesting, thematically weighted storytelling. Once again, I think there are other franchises where, if we were taking the bold swings we’ve been taking, it would feel like, “Wait a second, that doesn’t feel like what I like about these movies.”
But I think there is something specific in the DNA of Predator that has allowed for it. As well as — if all of the movies had been absolute bangers within the same formula, there would obviously be more interest in sticking to that formula. I think there have been peaks and valleys throughout the franchise’s history.
So it has warranted asking, “What if we did something different with this?” Because what we had been seeing, we had gotten a healthy dose of. So I think all of that is in the recipe for doing something more special.
DEVELOPING THE NEXT ENTRY
BROBIBLE: You’re working on the next one but not officially greenlit?
DAN: Not officially. But greenlight is abstract. Sometimes you just keep developing and then you’re making it. We’re exploring multiple approaches. After Prey, I developed multiple ideas at once. There are different entry points to Predator we haven’t seen — even in sci-fi. We’ll see which one wants to happen first.
ORIGINAL VS. IP
BROBIBLE: Just sitting here talking to you, my brain went down a bit of a rabbit hole. You’re in a powerful position right now having reinvigorated the Predator franchise. Then you sign a deal with Paramount, who has big sci-fi properties. Naturally, the first one I think of is Star Trek. Is this the moment you reinvent something like Star Trek, or focus on originals?
DAN: The Paramount deal includes an original project they’re excited about and I’m excited about. But they also have very cool toys. A lot of what I’ve made has been fueled by “no’s.” I’ve pitched bold ideas for other franchises that were too bold. So I’d take that concept and redirect it.
Killer of Killers came from an idea I pitched elsewhere — people fighting across eras. They didn’t go for it. But it worked perfectly for Predator. Before Badlands, I pitched focusing on a creature species instead of humans. That got a no. Years later, that idea resurfaced. I’m always looking for unique ways in. Sometimes you don’t get the IP, but you get the idea.
CLOAKING AND HONOR IN YAUTJA CULTURE
BROBIBLE: For a species so steeped in warrior culture, and you use the word honor — how is the cloaking system allowed? How do they not see that as cheating? I think of Jack Sparrow in Pirates, pulling out the gun in the sword fight, and that being the most dishonorable thing a pirate could do. If you’re a true pirate, your swords up. So, where is that logic for the Yautja?
DAN: I have multiple ways of answering this. One is ironic — I’ve talked a lot about thinking of them as barbarians. Conan the Barbarian. Frank Frazetta paintings. Taking inspiration from that.
But also pirate. I view them a little bit as pirates. And I don’t think of pirates as the most honorable. So it’s funny when you say, “A pirate goes swords up.” I don’t know. I think pirates are about using whatever advantage they have. Han Solo is a space pirate, and he shoots first.
The other thing is — the dad is the villain. And we hate the dad for doing that. In terms of the dad doing it, absolutely, that is meant to feel wrong. And I think the sentiment is shared. The thing that helped me understand the Yautja was thinking about people using all of their capacity to thwart their foe.
A tiger doesn’t not use its teeth when it’s fighting you. That’s what it has. That’s its advantage. It also has disadvantages. But its advantage is teeth. Humans don’t have sharp teeth, claws, or the agility of a tiger. What we have is intelligence and the capacity to make tools. So a human uses its full capacity to go up against its foe. Humans use camouflage. They use long-range weaponry. Explosive weaponry. All of those things.
The Yautja have developed their — or some would argue adopted or adapted another species’ technology, which is going down a deeper well — but they have the capacity to use that weaponry. Especially when they are examining their foe. But as we see in the ’87 movie, once it discovers something that feels like a great match, it decides to take off its helmet and fight more toe-to-toe.
BROBIBLE: I like the distinction between using it during a hunt versus what the father did.
DAN: In the opening sequence, Kwei’s brother is cloaked. Dak says it’s time to earn your cloak. It may be that Kwei wasn’t fast enough to use his own cloak — and the father was.
KWEI & THE EMOTIONAL OPENING
BROBIBLE: The Kwei character — I bet you haven’t been asked much about Kwei — but I could have asked you about Kwei for like fifteen minutes. This is one of my favorite arcs in film: the hero who is strong, but not quite strong enough to beat the bad guy. The “I can hold him off, but not for long” type of character. Talk to me about why that kind of arc is so effective, and why this was the place to start.
DAN: Everything in that beginning was a balancing act of behavior that feels mean and badass, but also emotionally resonant. When you’re finally seeing Predators — seeing the Yautja — you want them to live up to expectation. If they’re training, he could potentially kill you even while training. It’s heightened. It’s intense.
But there’s still familial, brotherly, protective love. It just comes out in more unique ways. I always say my North Star of movie openings is — speaking of Star Trek — Star Trek ‘09. I weep intensely every time I watch that movie. In the first five minutes. There is no other movie — from Ordinary People to Terms of Endearment — where in the first five minutes I am crying like that. That Hemsworth scene. Fathers and sons nails me.
So the idea was: can we start in a place that emotional? So that you can overcome the fact that you’re looking at a monster — a Predator — for the entire movie, and still feel something for it. That doesn’t start with Dek. That starts with Kwei. You care about Kwei. And then you care about wanting to avenge him.
ELLE FANNING AND THE POWER LOADER
BROBIBLE: What did OSCAR-NOMINATED(!) Elle Fanning bring that wasn’t on the page?
DAN: Oscar nominated, I know — so cool. Very cool. A lot of times, the dual role thing — she’s playing the comedic sidekick in some respects, and the antagonist. Usually those are two different kinds of actors. And she did both tremendously well.
She also just has a physicality that allowed for us to not have — her playing dead, her playing shut down — we didn’t need to rely on rigs or suspenders or her being dragged in specific ways. Her ability to just move differently. To walk back-to-back in certain ways. That’s not something you can cast for.
You can’t audition someone and say, “Are you good at being an inanimate robot?” She’s double-jointed in interesting ways. There were things she did physically that were surprising and awesome.
And I kind of always felt like maybe she had already been Oscar-nominated. So when she was, it felt like, “Oh, that makes sense.” She’s just that good.
BROBIBLE: And how about the idea of using the super power loader? Tell me about that a-ha moment.
DAN: That idea came early. We created pitch art: Dek on a creature with a flaming sword, Thea riding another, and in the foreground the giant yellow foot. The challenge was making it feel like the ultimate threat without ripping off Aliens or Avatar. The original power loader was utilitarian equipment repurposed for war. We needed to keep that spirit. What helped was giving her Yautja weapons and letting her turn the shoulder cannon on him. Seeing the three targeting dots on a Predator was powerful.
DEK VS. XENOMORPH AND GOODBYES
BROBIBLE: Let’s set betting odds. Dek versus a standard adult Xenomorph. Who’s favored?
DAN: If the Yautja has full weaponry, it’s no contest. Look at how Xenomorphs are defeated. Colonial Marines were fighting swarms and still took many down. One-on-one, with full gear, the Predator wins.
BROBIBLE: Dan, it’s always a pleasure. Whether it’s Badlands 2 or your original time travel crime film, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
DAN: Thanks, Eric. Appreciate it, always.