The Predator franchise is proving it still has plenty of life left. With director Dan Trachtenberg at the helm, this month’s Predator: Killer of Killers is the latest hit, following the success of Prey in 2022. The new film is an anthology, showing battles between Predators and new heroes from different times and places. But fans are wondering: could the series’ most famous opponent make a comeback?
The final scene of Killer of Killers reveals that the Predators keep their toughest human foes as trophies, trapping them in suspended animation so they can fight again. Many fans remember that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, Dutch, survived his battle with a Predator in the original 1987 film. That means Dutch could be one of these trophies—and could return to the franchise after all these years.
This isn’t just fan speculation. Trachtenberg himself has thought about it:
“So the movie was made under the code name Warehouse, as that end moment was in the original idea pitch to the studio, and it felt like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Certainly Arnold, like many others, was a survivor of his story, and one could easily imagine him up there in cryo, along with any other Earth champion of champions from other planets.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger is now 77, and it’s been nearly 40 years since he first faced a Predator. But if the Terminator series can keep bringing him back, there’s no reason the Predator movies can’t do the same. Maybe Dutch has been unfrozen for battles over the years, or maybe he could return in animated form. Fans would love to see him back in live-action.
Related Whatever Happened to Schwarzenegger’s ‘Dutch’ after 1987’s ‘Predator’?
Trachtenberg also talked about the possibility of a Killer of Killers 2. He says he makes each movie as if it’s his only chance:
“Yeah, certainly. The cool [part] of this movie is that it opens up the door to tell these kinds of stories in different eras, in different places, in different planets — but also, the further adventures of these heroes that we bonded with in a very unique way.”
“Certainly [each of my movies] are being made as if this was my only shot. Everything was thrown into it. Should we be able to do more… Certainly Killer of Killers seizes something, and Badlands [does too]. Hopefully there will be something more, but they don’t rely on the something more. Hopefully they are both cool within their own merits.”
Predator: Killer of Killers is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+12.
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English (US) · 