I need to see some more Dekker stuff.. my exposure is limited to Robocop 3 and some brief behind the scenes snippets in The Winston Effect. Interesting to hear about him still writing stuff as they're about to enter production, could actually be a good thing if he's kept close during the shoot considering Shane Black's own contribution as on-set writer in the original.
I feel like most of us are trying to temper expectations but remain cautiously optimistic with this one. Black is very dependable and if he sticks to his word we should end up with something at least on the level of "Predators with better dialogue- at Christmas."
I actually like that they're taking inspiration from the entire saga, even though AVP could've turned out better those films did a good job of introducing new toys and made these ugly muthas feel a bit more like an actual space-faring culture. They evolved the overall aesthetic and even the sound design of the first AVP expanded on what had gone before in interesting ways (like changing how the clicks sound in predator POV). So there's definitely stuff to mine there, and lessons to be learned of course.
