Michael Finch Reveals ‘Predators’ Trilogy Plans, Schwarzenegger’s Return & A Bold Journey to the Predator Planet

‘Predators’ (2010) is a science fiction action movie directed by Nimród Antal and the third in the ‘Predator’ series. The movie served as sort of a reboot for the franchise, but it was planned from at least 1994. Robert Rodriguez wrote a script for a third ‘Predator’ film, but it was rejected due to a high budget.

Fifteen years later, 20th Century Fox revisited the script and decided to move forward with it, giving Rodriguez a chance to revive the franchise. In ‘Predators,’ humans are abducted and brought to a remote planet where they are hunted by the Predators, instead of the usual setup where Predators come to Earth.

The group of humans includes dangerous individuals such as a mercenary, a Yakuza member, a death row felon, and a serial killer. Co-writer Michael Finch explained that they wanted to change the formula of the series, which had become repetitive with the Predators simply coming to Earth. He aimed to expand the ‘Predator’ universe by offering a fresh perspective, focusing more on the story and characters rather than just gruesome kills.

We wanted to flip the paradigm a little bit … and we desperately wanted to expand the canon. It had sort of gotten stuck in a death spiral a little bit. They come to Earth, you don’t really learn anything particularly new about them. It’s not the story, it’s not the characters, it’s just now, ‘Can the filmmakers make the kills more gruesome and interesting?’ It became base horror and we wanted to do something a little bit different.

Finch and Litvak introduced a new element to the ‘Predator’ lore with the idea of a civil war between Super Predators and regular Predators. Due to budget limitations, they couldn’t fully realize their original climax, which included a battle in outer space.

They quickly rewrote the script, adding the character of Noland, played by Laurence Fishburne, who had been stranded on the reserve for years. Additionally, they had hoped to bring Arnold Schwarzenegger back as Dutch to kick off a trilogy that would ultimately explore the Predators’ home planet.

Finch revealed that the team had envisioned a moment where Arnold Schwarzenegger made a cameo after Royce (Adrien Brody) defeats the Super Predator. In this scene, a ship lands, and new Predators appear, overwhelming the humans. As the smoke clears, one of the Predators removes its helmet to reveal Schwarzenegger, suggesting that after defeating a Predator in the first film, his character Dutch had been taken by the Predators and became part of their clan.

A ship lands, smoke comes out, Predators start walking out, you’re entirely f***ed. You don’t have a chance, you’re out of ammunition, you’re bleeding, you’ve got a stick in your hand. These guys are coming out, the smoke clears, [one of them] pulls off his helmet and it’s Schwarzenegger. He’s part of that clan now … By virtue of the fact that he had beaten this Predator [in the first movie], he’d become very interesting to the Predators and he had been taken and become one of them, essentially.

The plan for Schwarzenegger’s cameo fell through due to his commitments as California’s Governor, but Finch and Litvak had ambitious ideas for the next two ‘Predator’ films. The second movie would have featured a battle aboard a mothership orbiting above the game reserve, expanding the Predator lore and introducing different clans with distinct cultures.

The third film was to take audiences to the Predator homeworld, modeled after ancient Rome with gladiatorial combat, where the Predators were crumbling under their own power, and the “Super Predators” were enhancing themselves by taking DNA from the galaxy’s strongest species—a concept later seen in ‘The Predator’ (2018).

Although ‘Predators’ became the second-highest-grossing film in the franchise, Fox didn’t approve a sequel due to its mixed critical reception. Finch attributes this lukewarm response to fans’ attachment to the original 1987 film, especially after previous sequels that felt like cash grabs.

He praised the approach taken by Fox (now under Disney) with ‘Prey’ (2022), which reimagined the franchise in a fresh, smaller-scale direction instead of trying to replicate the original, a smart move that avoided being derivative and offered a new path for beloved IP.

To their credit, Fox [now 20th Century Studios under Disney’s ownership] took that paradigm, threw it out the window [with 2022’s Prey] and basically said, ‘Look, we can’t win by trying to remake a version of the original, so let’s do something entirely different,’ which I think was a really, really smart idea. It also indicates a path forward for a lot of IP that’s gotten kicked around and beat down a little beat. We need to take these beloved titles and reimagine them … 

Where we were trying to build bigger and bigger films, they are going smaller and smaller in a sense, which is very smart. It’s cost effective, it’s dynamic, it’s different, it’s not derivative. Ours was an homage. We were trying to stay true to the spirit of the original [while Disney has] moved away from that very nicely.

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