No./18 How to teach an old monster new tricks
Director Dan Trachtenberg is breaking new ground with his Predator companion film, PREY
HE DIDN’T KNOW it at the time, but Dan Trachtenberg was already developing his Predator movie back in 1987, before he’d even watched the original. “I was dying to see it, but I was not allowed,” says the director, who was six when Predator was released. “In third grade, I was on the way to a karate tournament with these [older kids] who had seen it, and over the entire trip they described the whole movie.
I vividly remember them saying there was this character, Billy [Sonny Landham], a Native American scout who fights the Predator on the bridge over a waterfall.” When Trachtenberg eventually saw the movie, that fight was nowhere to be seen (Billy dies off-screen). “I just thought, ’What?!’ But that image captured my imagination.” The thought stuck with him for 30 years and eventually led to his Predator prequel, Prey.