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Predators Co-Screenwriter Michael Finch Talks Trilogy Plans

One of the co-screenwriters of 2010’s Predators, Michael Finch, recently expressed ideas for Predator sequels which were at one point in the works, but never came to be.

Sitting down for an interview with SyFy, Finch talked with them about plans for a cinematic trilogy, which would’ve continued the story from 2010’s Predators.

He starts by describing earlier ideas for Predators, including a larger-scale space battle, and an alternate ending which had Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Dutch.

“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.”

Finch also went into plans for the sequel to Predators, the plot of which we exclusively revealed while chatting with Predators’ other co-screenwriter Alex Litvak during Episode #114 of our podcast. In this film, survivors Royce and Isabelle would band with a new resistance and eventually find themselves onboard a large Predator vessel in an attempt to get back to Earth.

“The only way to [escape] is to fight their way out, so they have to take control of the ship. It was gonna be in space and keep expanding the lore of the Predators in general and start establishing a clan structure … From the outside, they appear to be the same, but their attitudes and cultures are very different from the inside.”

In entirely new information, Finch revealed that they were also working on a third film for this trilogy, one in which apparently our heroes took the fight to the Predator Homeworld:

“We never really got there, but we were thinking of modeling it on [ancient] Rome [with] gladiatorial combat, internecine warfare, native clans on the outside, and more established ones on the inside. Mostly, we wanted to show a civilization that was crumbling under its own weight a little bit. They had evolved so far… they’d conquered everything in a weird way and were sort of collapsing under their own weight.”

Returning to more ideas from earlier drafts of Predators, the Super Predator sub-species would be genetically augmenting themselves with the DNA of their prey. This concept would also eventually end up being central to the following film that did make it to the screen, The Predator.

“They pick and choose the baddest opponents that they can kind and if they’re worthy, they take their DNA, separate those things that make them dangerous, and implant them in their own DNA to improve themselves. The idea was that there had been a dramatic escalation in Predator evolution through science and that there were gonna be side effects of that. It’s be careful what you wish for in a sense.”

We reached out to co-screenwriter Alex Litvak who provided us with some additional insights on this third Predators film:

My recollection was unlike the sequel for which we had a definite plan and a strong vision. The third movie – if there ever was one – was much more fast and loose. Mike is right, we talked about maybe going to a Predator world, but that was it, as far as I recall.

A lot also hinged on what kind of sequel we did – Die Hard on the Predator ship with Adrien Brody and an Alien crossover at the end? The one set on Earth with a downed Predator ship and a new cast? So the third movie would have presumably followed whatever path we chose.

Finch also reflected on Predators not achieving the success they had hoped for with audiences, and praised the current direction of the franchise following Prey. Head over to SyFy to read their full interview.

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