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.