"What hasn't been done in the franchise before?" is a phrase filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg asks himself whenever he's trying to dream up a new Predator movie. With Predator: Badlands, the filmmaker, who won franchise fans' respect with his acclaimed 2022 entry Prey, wanted to make a sequel without humans. The result? An unexpectedly funny action-adventure centering a Yautja outcast and a Weyland-Yutani synth.
With its stars, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi and Elle Fanning, sharing scenes with only four other actors, the cast list is almost comically short – especially when you're not counting the voice cameos from Alison Wright and Stranger Things' Matt and Ross Duffer. In a new interview with GamesRadar+, Fanning recalled how its streamlined ensemble made it feel like they were making "a small film" rather than a big-budget blockbuster.
