‘Predator: Badlands’ Director Asked Disney For A Franchise Production Bible, Only To Find Out “It Did Not Exist”
In sadly confirming that the Yautja are treated with as little respect by its corporate Disney overlords as just about every other IP they’ve acquired over the past two decades, Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg has revealed that, much to his and most fans’ dismay, an actively-kept production bible containing the entirety of the franchise’s lore does not exist in any way, shape, or form.
Trachtenberg, who also served as the writer/director for both Prey and the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, revealed the House of Mouse’s indifference to the action sci-fi series during a recent interview with The Last Podcast on the Left host Ed Larson.
At the top of the currently-Patreon-locked discussion, Trachtenberg was pressed by his host, “I feel like you know better about Yaujta lore than anyone right now; Was there a Silmarillion that you got to had to work off of or did you kind of get to make it up as you go?”, to which he admitted, “The truth of the matter is I don’t know more than anyone.”
“There are people that know the lore from ancilliary material far more than I do, and I know a certain amount, that’s for sure. But the funny thing about this franchise is there’s no Gene Rodenberry, there’s no George Lucas, and the movies were all very episodic and lean-and-mean, so the background of the Yaujta species, the ‘Predator species’, was really explored in the comics and novels.”
From there turning to Larson’s mention of a Predator-equivalent to J.R.R. Tolkien’s comprehensive collection of Middle-earth knowledge, Trachtenberg dropped the bombshell that, “When I signed on to do the first movie, Prey, I was like ‘Alright, give me the goods, show me the [production] bible, let me know what’s up!’ And it did not exist. The studio did not have anything of that nature.”
“It wasn’t until I linked up with Alec Guilless and Tom Woodruff of, at the time Studio ADI – they worked with Stan Winston on the first movie in 1987 and had been with the franchise for most of its run, and Alien as well, they’ve worked on several alien movies – Alec is the closest proximity to, for the films, having some sort of bible. He put together a whole packet of weapons and armors and designs, species design, that were explored and either used in their films or almost used and abandoned or whatever, so I could just see everything that was out there and truly discern what the design language was for the franchise.
“But from there, I am using my own narrative instincts just like the people that wrote the comics and novels did to create the canon that people, all of the fans on the internet, devour. So I’m kinda half-running on the lore that has existed, and kind of taking what I find to be the most compelling and narratively rich and then forming my own sort of canon with the movies as I’m putting forth.”
RELATED: ‘Predator: Badlands’ Review — Predator At Its Action-Packed Best
However, far from just running rough-shod and ripping up the history books for his “own sort of canon”, Trachtenberg, when asked by Larson, “Do other movies like, Predator and Predators, does that exist in your world?”, clarified that he was absolutely attempting to play the cards he was dealt rather than throw the entire deck out.
“I think every Predator movie has had awesome sequences, awesome bits in them. I don’t know that I’ve loved every single movie holistically, but the aesthetic of our cloaking device that started with Prey and was in the Killer of Killers and Badlands, that came more from the 2018 Predator than any other installment of the franchise.”
“Even the notion of the cloaking device being something inside the gauntlet, like you know, a key fob that goes in the gauntlet, that’s revealed at the end of Badlands, that came from the 2018 movie as well. And a lot of our weapons – what we call the ‘net ball’ came from the net gun that was in Predator 2 and Alien Vs. Predator, so I’ve kinda taken elements from all of them.”
Asked in follow-up if “They’re all canon then?”, Trachtenberg laughed before explaining, “I don’t make that decision; [In my view] as soon as a movie that has something references, narratively, something from another film, at least those are canonized. Until someone changes it later. Whatever the movies say, then that’s what’s true.”
As noted above, while Disney’s lack of interest in keeping any sort of ‘living reference document’ for the Predator franchise – which at this point encompasses six films, eleven novels, and roughly 41 comic series/one-shots (not counting non-canon crossovers like Batman Versus Predator or Predator vs. Marvel) – absolutely shows an incredible level of disrespect to fans, as it’s essentially hand-waving away anyone who has invested themselves in the franchise’s lore as ‘caring too much about a fictional story’, it is unfortunately par for the course to see the House of Mouse attempting to ‘maximize profits while minimizing effort’.
The best example of their corporate indifference comes in the form of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as though Disney has an ever-expanding library of comic book stories to choose from, the studio’s current modus operandi sees them explicitly encouraging their various casts and crews avoid reading anything involving the characters at hand for fear that they might pull from the source material rather than flow with their ‘live-action direction’.
While some, like Madame Web star Sydney Sweeney, take it upon themselves to trawl the long boxes anyway, they are far out-numbered by those who, either voluntarily or after receiving said direction, choose not to look at the comics all together, including including Secret Invasion director Ali Selim, Shang–Chi star Simu Liu, and the MCU’s current Captain America Anthony Mackie.
To top it all off, MCU franchise producer Nate Moore outright admitted to The Ringer in November 2022 that “a lot of times we’re pitched writers who love Marvel, and to me that’s always a red flag.”
“I don’t want you to already have a pre-existing idea of what it is, because you grew up with the comics and that’s what you want to recreate. I want someone who’s going to be hard on the material, who can go ‘What is this? I think there’s a movie here. but maybe we should be looking at it in this way.'”
“I think that’s important to be able to go ‘Look, the source material is great, and I love it and comics work great in the medium they were built in, but that’s not a direct, one-to-one translation to the best version of the movie. And sometimes it takes someone who’s out of the culture to go ‘Hey, I know you think it should be this, but maybe it should be this other thing!'”
All in all, the non-existence of a Predator franchise bible may not be the biggest surprise, but it’s nonetheless exceptionally infuriating.
