The official trailer for director Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands (a pseudo-sequel to 2022’s Prey) immediately opens with the image of a Weyland-Yutani robot played by Elle Fanning.
From the moment that visual arrived online in July 2025, sci-fi fans began to speculate whether 20th Century Studios was laying the groundwork for another Alien vs. Predator movie. It makes a lot of sense. After all, the Disney-owned banner formerly known as 20th Century Fox owns the rights to both iconic franchises. A new crossover flick helmed by the right director would do gangbusters at the box office.
For Trachtenberg, however, the inclusion of a Synthetic was less about sowing the seeds for a possible AvP project and more about letting the spotlight remain on our young Yautja hero, Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi).
Predator: Badlands director talks melding the Predator and Alien franchises together
“I knew I did not want to put any humans in the movie,” the filmmaker recently told SYFY WIRE over Zoom.
“I just felt like that would water down the premise of the ‘Predator as protagonist’ [setup], and it would become another ‘Predator as the sidekick to the human,’” he continued. “But because Prey was much more of a solo survival tale, I did like the idea of there being other things the Yautja meets along the way. I also loved the idea of a monster and a robot teaming up. There’s something really cool to that story. And then came the idea of, ‘Well, I know a company that makes robots and both franchises happen to be owned by Disney and 20th [Century Studios]…’”
Thankfully, the studio was on board with the idea. Their only concern was the fact that Fanning’s character, Thia, would be “used as a backpack for most of the movie,” the director remembered. “The head of the studio would often be like, ‘What’s going on with that backpack movie?’ And so, we actually code-named the movie ‘Backpack’ during production. But aside from the obvious human anxiety over a movie that’s so bold, people were—for the most part—equally very excited about pulling it off. I find myself very lucky to have the collaborators that I did, because not everyone would see the promise in such a crazy idea.”
Will Dan Trachtenberg direct an Alien vs. Predator movie?
While nothing is confirmed at publishing time, Trachtenberg knows how he’d tackle a crossover between the genre behemoths if given the chance.
“For me, that would look like something that came from the narrative,” he explained. “That the movie wouldn’t have its sole existence based around, ‘Let’s see what happens when these two things clash.’ It would be because that’s where the story is the most compelling and interesting … across the board, there’s been a lot of fun conversations about all the kinds of crazy stories we could tell.”