Hulu just announced that its recent film Prey, a prequel to the famed 1987 film Predator, is the “#1 premiere on Hulu to date, including all film and TV series debuts.” That’s a big deal for any film, but even bigger when you realise where it all started.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Prey director Dan Trachtenberg revealed that the first seeds of the idea came from a car ride when he was a child and a story of a scene that doesn’t exactly exist. “I was in third grade when Predator came out, and I was not allowed to see R-rated movies,” he told the trade. “So then I found myself in the back of a carpool on the way to a karate tournament with all the sixth graders who had just seen Predator, and they spent the entire ride telling me the entire movie. And I vividly remembered that they said there was a scene where Billy, the Native American tracker, stood on a bridge over a waterfall and fought the Predator. But when I eventually saw the movie, that scene was not in it. [Laughs.] The beginning of it is, but then it cuts away. So the seed was planted, and then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a movie that focuses on that character’s story?’ And Prey isn’t exactly that, but it is, spiritually.”
In the original film, Billy (Sonny Landham) is the first to sense the Predator and it begins to weigh on him. As his team is picked off one by one, he basically offers himself up as a sacrifice so that the others can get attempt to “get to the choppa!” We see him cut his chest while standing over a gorge and, soon after, hear his scream. We never see him die. And, though there’s an almost Mandela effect belief that the scene exists, it likely does not.
But just the thought of that character’s struggle with the Predator, as well as a desire to make an action-driven movie a la Mad Max: Fury Road, led Trachtenberg to Prey. You can read more about the journey at the above link or in our very own interview with him here.
Prey is currently streaming on Hulu.
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