Predator: Badlands stars praise director Dan Trachtenberg for "adding heart" to the sci-fi horror franchise and encouraging "play" on set: "Whenever there was an ad-lib, he had to learn it in Yautja"

"What hasn't been done in the franchise before?" is a phrase filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg asks himself whenever he's trying to dream up a new Predator movie. With Predator: Badlands, the filmmaker, who won franchise fans' respect with his acclaimed 2022 entry Prey, wanted to make a sequel without humans. The result? An unexpectedly funny action-adventure centering a Yautja outcast and a Weyland-Yutani synth.With its stars, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi and Elle Fanning, sharing scenes with only