When it comes to crossovers between movie franchises, I think it’s fair to be a bit cynical about how the proverbial sausage gets made. Hollywood obviously loves its well-known intellectual properties, and having two blend together frequently feels like a very orchestrated move executed principally for box office-centric reasons. That being said, one could be excused for thinking that the influence of Alien on the upcoming Predator: Badlands was a starting point from which the new 2025 blockbuster grew, but that’s not actually the case, as the big screen reunion of the sci-fi legends came together surprisingly organically behind the scenes.
Last summer, I took a trip with a small group of other journalists to Auckland, New Zealand to visit the set of Predator: Badlands when the film was still in production, and one of the big reveals during interviews was that the story would feature key elements from Alien: namely, Elle Fanning is playing multiple android characters built by the sinister Weyland-Yutani Corporation. It’s obviously not the first time that these two franchises have collided (see: the easter egg at the end of Predator 2 and the Alien vs. Predator movies), but it’s notable that director Dan Trachtenberg didn’t actually set out to execute a new collision with the film. Instead, it came about simply because he didn’t want to have to include any humans in the blockbuster.
