Dan Trachtenberg’s surprise hit Prey revitalized the iconic Predator series, and with the release date for Predator: Badlands swiftly approaching, the excitement level around the sci-fi franchise has never been higher. The latest entry will actually be the second Predator movie released in 2025, as it comes on the heels of the acclaimed animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers.

After a series of middling sequels over the last 20 years, the Predator franchise burst back to life with the success of Prey, which offered something completely new to audiences. Sending the franchise to the past as opposed to the future was ambitious to say the least, given how stark a departure from the futuristic franchise’s bread and ʙuттer it was.

Trachtenberg’s gamble paid off, and the renewed public interest sparked even more exploration. Trachtenberg revisited the past again with Predator: Killer of Killers, and with a simple post-credits scene he kicked the door open on the expanded lore behind the Yautja homeworld and culture. Trachtenberg is poised to bring something new to the table again with Predator: Badlands, as his latest comments indicate.

The Predator Franchise Continues To Break New Ground

In an interview with Empire, Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg shed some light on his approach to Predator: Badlands, and the overall trajectory of the franchise. As Trachtenberg noted, he wanted to shy away from immediately doing a sequel to Prey, despite that being what some would consider to be the obvious choice, given Prey‘s overnight success.

Prey was special because it was this big idea that hadn’t existed before. I wanted the next thing to be that, too.

Predator: Badlands features a completely new angle unlike anything the franchise has ever done before: the Predator as a protagonist. A young “runt” Yautja named Dek is set to battle his way across an ultra-dangerous planet loaded with exotic threats in order to earn his place in his hunter/warrior culture, and he’ll do so with the ᴀssistance of an android from Weyland-Yutani, the famous corporation synonymous with the Alien franchise.

Simply put, no other sci-fi franchise is taking the risks that Trachtenberg is with the Predator franchise, which is what makes it so exciting. Its most obvious comparison is of course the Alien franchise, which is going through its own rebirth after the huge success of Alien: Romulus and the hit streaming show Alien: Earth.

Alien: Earth is certainly a new angle for the franchise, but the core concepts of the franchise are still intact. Similarly, many people praised Alien: Romulus for returning to the formula that made the first two Alien movies so successful.

In other similarly-scaled franchises, there’s more of the same. The latest Jurᴀssic World movie also represented a return to the series’ roots, and the Terminator franchise can’t seem to get back up off the mat after a series of poor sequels that played fast and loose with time travel, leaving the franchise as a rat’s nest badly in need of a reboot.

The Predator franchise is taking bold new steps in several directions, but always with an eye on quality storytelling. The focus is on bringing something new without losing the thematic and aesthetic qualities that made the Predator franchise so beloved in the first place. With several projects in the pipeline after Badlands, Predator is easily the most exciting current sci-fi franchise.

A Looming Alien Crossover Makes Predator’s Future Brighter Than Ever

There is plenty of reason to think its success will continue for quite some time, too. The Weyland-Yutani connection in Predator: Badlands with the synthetic Thia all but guarantees a crossover with the Alien franchise at some point in the near future. Although Dan Trachtenberg recently confirmed there would be no xenomorphs in Badlands, it seems like further setup for a bona fide crossover is inevitable.

With both franchises on the rise, the timing should be right over the next couple of years for the two cosmic conquerors to clash. While they’ve technically met before on the big screen in the two grossly inadequate Alien vs. Predator movies of the 2000s, those movies are not considered canon for either franchise.

With rejuvenated narratives and both franchises focused on creating quality projects, a crossover is now an exciting prospect. Trachtenberg’s confirmation that Badlands does not include a xenomorph should be encouraging, because leaving it at the Weyland-Yutani inclusion but stopping short of the xenomorph indicates that care is being taken with a future crossover story.

It would be so easy for Trachtenberg to make the xenomorph the final villain for Badlands, as some have theorized. However, one of the major knocks on IP franchises has been how lazy the writing has gotten with each sequel. Over-reliance on aging stars and nostalgia has crippled many sci-fi franchises, and the shock value of seeing a Predator on-screen with a xenomorph would accomplish a shallow viral “moment”, but little else.

Instead, it seems like Trachtenberg is content to flesh out his version of the Predator universe, leaving plenty of threads to be picked up at later dates as well. It’s why Predator: Badlands is so exciting: it has so much potential given how much new ground the movie will cover. It’s an apt metaphor for the future of the Predator franchise as a whole, in fact.