Disney’s renewed faith in the Predator franchise is leading to a belated theatrical release for the film that gave new life to the nearly 40-year-old sci-fi movie series.
AMC Theaters has announced they will present 2022’s prequel movie Prey on November 5 as part of a special double-bill with the latest franchise entry Predator: Badlands. Prey was originally released on Hulu as a streaming-only offering, making it the first Predator film not to receive a theatrical roll-out.
Despite being relegated to Hulu, Prey’s back-to-basics sci-fi action wowed critics, and the movie now sits at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the second-highest-ranked Predator film on the aggregation site, behind only 2025’s animated offering Predator: Killer of Killers. The original 1987 Predator is considered an action movie classic, but scores just 80% on RT.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McTiernan launched Predator 38 years ago, but the franchise is now under the stewardship of Prey director Dan Trachtenberg, who also helmed Killer of Killers and the upcoming Badlands.
Disney’s acquisition of Fox brought Predator under their umbrella, but the franchise looked to be on life-support after 2018’s The Predator grossed an underwhelming $160 million worldwide. $65 million was reportedly spent on Prey, but it was nevertheless sent to streaming, a sign of producers’ possible lack of faith in the film’s box office prospects.
Prey was the most-streamed movie the week of its release according to data from Reelgood, leading many to argue it should have been given a full theatrical roll-out. Three years later, Predator: Badlands marks the franchise’s return to the big screen, and Prey gets to go along for the ride thanks to AMC’s special double-feature.
The second half of that Predator double-bill, Trachtenberg’s Badlands, is not a sequel to Prey, but instead launches the franchise in a new direction, one its producer Ben Rosenblatt calls a “big swing.” Rosenblatt explained his and Trachtenberg’s thought process on plotting the series’ future when ScreenRant visited the Badlands set:
“One of the things that was most important to Dan and to me, and what attracted me to Prey, is that it was something unexpected. It was something that people hadn’t done with the franchise before. So in thinking about what to do next, Dan was really set on, ‘How do we do the next thing and not make it expected?’ And I think it had been in the back of his mind, as he sort of searched for what that could be, was, ‘Well, this is the kind of big swing that no one’s taken yet.'”
That big swing takes the franchise timeline from Prey’s pre-colonial American setting to an alien planet in the future, and for the first time centers on a member of the Predators’ species as the main protagonist. Trailers for Predator: Badlands tease a cross-over with another Disney-owned property, as elements familiar from the Alien films are seen alongside the film’s new Yautja hero.
The Predator species was given the name Yautja in expanded universe novels and comics.
Though Prey’s fierce Comanche warrior protagonist Naru is not touted as being in Predator: Badlands, the animated Predator: Killer of Killers may have hinted at her having a cameo, as it revealed that she had been captured by the Yautja and placed in suspended animation.
The same film teased the potential return of Schwarenegger’s Predator character Dutch alongside Prey’s Naru (Amber Midthunder) and Predator 2’s Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover).
