Dan Trachtenberg attends the "Predator: Badlands" UK Special Screening at BFI IMAX Waterloo on October 27, 2025 in London, England. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Dan Trachtenberg doesn't miss. From 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and Prey (2021) to June's Predator: Killer of Killers and this Friday's Predator: Badlands, the Philadelphia native's feature career continues to stockpile rave reviews. Badlands, which he co-conceived with his Prey writer Patrick Aison, blazes a new trail for the now 9-film franchise that began with John McTiernan's 1987 classic, Predator. Trachtenberg has now turned a Yautja, the well-established villain that is colloquially referred to as the Predator, into the protagonist of his latest installment. Furthermore, he's paired the Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) with Elle Fanning's Weyland-Yutani synthetic known as Thia, who's heavy on words and light on legs. Dek has been discarded by his Yautja clan, and in a last-ditch effort to prove himself, he flies his brother Kwei's ship to Genna, the most dangerous planet in the universe, to go on an unsanctioned hunt for its most mythical beast. That's where he meets Thia, and through some persuasion, he realizes she can aid his quest. Related Stories Movies 'Predator: Badlands' Star Elle Fanning Explains How Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi Wore Her Like a Backpack Movies 'Predator: Badlands' Review: Elle Fanning Is a Lovable Robot BFF to the Sweetest Predator Yet in a Deft, Disarmingly Kindhearted Franchise Entry The filmmaker knew he needed a lush environment to sell the otherworldly quality of Genna, and Trachtenberg soon found himself prepping to shoot in New Zealand. During that time, he received an invitation from one of his stablemates at 20th Century to come and hang out for the day. The source of that invite was from none other than James Cameron. The decorated filmmaker resides and works out of Wellington, New Zealand, and as the director of Aliens, the second installment in the Predator's sister franchise, his advice could certainly go a long way. So Trachtenberg drove eight hours to visit Cameron at the studio where December's Avatar: Fire and Ash was being worked on at the time. In Cameron's editing room, Trachtenberg explained his aforementioned plan for Predator: Badlands, and Cameron eventually gave his two cents when they sat down for dinner that night. "When he sat down [at dinner], he said, 'I was just thinking about what you're doing, and I think it's going to work,'" Trachtenberg tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Predator: Badlands' Nov. 7 theatrical release. "So all that wind in my sails carried me back up to Auckland to tell my crew. The blessing of that guy - who has taken on some pretty impossible odds and pulled them off - was absolutely incredible." However, Trachtenberg would later learn during Badlands' post-production that Cameron's stamp of approval that made him feel like the king of the world was tantamount to a Jedi mind trick. "There were a few specific questions that I had in mind, and I wanted to see if he could give us any helpful notes. So he saw the movie a couple months back, and he said, 'I have to be honest with you. When I first heard what you were doing, I did not think it was going to work. But holy crap, you pulled it off,'" Trachtenberg recalls mid-laugh. "He either did not remember that first conversation that meant a whole lot to me, or he really does know what someone in my position needs to hear to get things done. I think it's more the latter. So he put wind in our sails at just the right times, and I had to make sure we gave him a special thanks." Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Trachtenberg also discusses how Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover's legacy characters ended up in Predator: Killer of Killers nearly two months after its initial Hulu release. *** Dan Trachtenberg on the set of Predator: Badlands Nicola Dove/20th Century Studios After Prey, the internet pitched every possible historical time period for your live-action follow-up, but you clearly had another ambition in mind. Did you create Predator: Killer of Killers to basically satisfy all that historical demand? In some ways, yes. But the demand was also from myself. I loved the notion of what we had done [in the 1700s], but I really didn't want to just do the same thing in a [another] time period. So I tried to find a way that we could do the historical mashup again, but still have it feel fresh. And the thing that really unlocked it all was the idea for the fourth act of that movie. We made something that you thought was an anthology, but it's actually one story. So that's what really drove us towards making Killer of Killers, and by making an animated movie, we