How ‘Predator: Badlands’ Director Dan Trachtenberg Reinvented the Franchise – Again

By Drew Taylor

In 2018, the “Predator” franchise was on life support, if not outright dead.

The series, which started with John McTiernan’s 1987 action hit starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leader of a shadowy paramilitary unit who runs afoul of an alien hunter, had just endured “The Predator,” an ensemble attempt to — in writer/director Shane Black’s words — “event-ise” and reboot the franchise. But the movie received a cool response from critics (it has a 48 on Metacritic) and audiences (who gave it a C+ CinemaScore) and made only $160.5 million worldwide on a budget of $88 million.