Predator: Badlands revolved around a young Yautja, Dek, reluctantly teaming up with Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic android. That alone is a fairly significant link to the Alien franchise, but we very nearly got some much bigger cameos.
There's a brief, hard-to-spot nod to Prey's Naru in the Yautja, when Dek seeks out a planet he can travel to in hopes of proving himself. Talking to ScreenRant (via SFFGazette.com), filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg confirmed scrapped plans for Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch, Alien's Xenomorph, and "the backbiter creature from Killer of Killers" to be referenced.
Explaining that "the scene got truncated" to the point that audiences "could barely see" any of the characters, Trachtenberg pointed out that they were sacrificed as the lengthy dialogue scene was shortened.
"They had a longer conversation, or they said the same idea of 'Pick Your Planet,' and all that stuff, but it was a little bit longer," he said. "So there were more holograms to be in the background. And what we have now is more soft focus in the foreground, you kind of see it and all that."
"The thing we haven't gotten in all the great sci-fi we've enjoyed over the years is that it's the creatures, it's their movie, that's it, no humans. And then, I had other cool thoughts for what Naru could do in the future and was like, 'Oh, that would be awesome for that.' But I could feel it."
"There's definitely a version where you find Naru on that planet, and she has to [survive], and they meet," Trachtenberg continued. "I could see that version and didn't want to spend all the chips right away."
In the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, it was established that Naru, Dutch, and Danny Glover's Mike Harrigan are being cryogenically frozen and kept prisoner on Yautja Prime. When and where Trachtenberg plans to expand on that isn't clear, though he has been giving the franchise's future some thought.
"I'm in this zone of dreaming up more, like I said, as I had been previously. And then Paramount is this incredible opportunity to make original things that have been in my heart and mind for a long time," he shared. "I'm thrilled to have a place to make them theatrically. And they also have some very cool IP that I could now get to think about, like, "Oh, what might I do with that?" So, it's a simultaneous thing."
It's certainly exciting to think about where this franchise could go moving forward, and it still feels like the endgame is another Alien vs. Predator crossover movie.
Predator: Badlands earned a so-so $184.6 million at the worldwide box office and a budget of $105 million, so it's hard to say how much of a priority another movie is for Disney. Despite that, we surely haven't seen the last of the Yautja on our screens.
Predator: Badlands, which stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is set in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi), outcast from his clan, finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Fanning) and embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.
Predator: Badlands arrives on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on February 17.