“I’ve read a lot of [Black’s] script and I think it’s genius,” producer John Davis told Collider. “I think it’s genius and I think it’s entertaining, and what it did is recreate a famous franchise in a different, interesting way; looking at it from a different light. He’s just an amazing writer-director.”
“He’s got a way of looking at this that makes you excited again,” added Davis. “I love this franchise. It was the first movie I ever did. I remember in being in the jungle with Arnold [Schwarzenegger] as a 28-year-old and going, ‘This is a fun business!’… Shane’s amazing. He’s an amazing storyteller.”
The original film cast Schwarzenegger as the leader of an elite team of soldiers tasked with rescuing American hostages held by guerilla forces in a remote jungle region of Central America. Their mission is complicated by the arrival of a seemingly unstoppable alien hunter who begins hunting Schwarzenegger’s team.
Along with Schwarzenegger, the film’s cast included tough-guy actors Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura, as well as Black himself as a bespectacled soldier named “Hawkins.”
McTiernan’s immensely successful 1987 film spawned a 1990 sequel starring Danny Glover, as well as the 2010 spinoff movie Predators, starring Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, and Laurence Fishburne. The race of alien hunters also appeared in several crossover films with the Alien franchise, beginning with 2004’s Alien vs. Predator and then again in 2007’s Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.
It’s unknown whether Black’s Predator sequel will acknowledge any of the other films in the franchise.
“Shane’s got a writing partner, Fred Dekker. They’ve been doing it together and Fred’s great,” said Davis of Black’s frequent collaborator, who directed 1987’s The Monster Squad, which was co-written by Dekker and Black. “The two of them together, they’ve been in the business for a long time, but the writing is so fresh, the perspective is so fresh. I’m telling you you’re going to get something you don’t expect and you’re going to say, ‘This is the most entertaining way to reinvent a franchise.’ I mean he’s the guy who wrote Iron Man 3.”
Black’s next projects are expected to be the ’70s noir film The Nice Guys — starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe — and the pilot for Amazon’s upcoming spaghetti western series Edge.
There’s currently no timetable for the Predator sequel.
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