Robert Rodriguez Promises Badass ‘Predators’

Source: Ain’t It Cool News

The search for the director of Robert Rodriguez’s reboot of the Predator franchise is finally over. After a couple of weeks, director Nimrod Antal (Kontroll, Armored) has come out the victor. In an exclusive conversation between Rodriguez and Ain’t It Cool honcho, Harry Knowles, Rodriguez talked at great length about the project. And I think you’ll be pretty pleased.

ON ANTAL
First of all, on a personal level I found him to be an outstanding presence, a great communicator full of ideas, and upon meeting him you can immediately understand how he is able to wrangle cast and crew and get the best out of everyone. I always loved Kontroll, where he proved himself to be a very resourceful and original filmmaker. When I saw Armored, I could tell he’s also great with action and has a keen eye for casting. He reminded me of Quentin with how he was able to work with a group of very strong, singular actor talents and make it look effortless. I know he’ll be able to get the most out of what we want to be an outstanding cast.

ON STORY
I can’t go too much into the story right now, because we’re still writing. But it still involves a very intense group of people stranded on a Predator planet discovering unspeakable horrors (that are not always from outside their group). So like the original movie, the title does have a double meaning. Aliens was a different take on the Alien idea, and an original movie in it’s own right, and that’s what we want to do with this. As to how this movie will be viewed, one of the guys at Fox told me “No one is ever going to talk about AVP again after this film, I will stake my life on it.” And he’s a really nice guy, so I don’t want to see him dead. Now that lives are at stake, it’s no longer a job it’s a mission. Failure is not an option. We really want to go with a character driven action movie, because that’s what we all remember about the original Predator, and we want to take it even further with this.

ON LOCATION
Any stagework will be done here, and to take advantage of the new Texas incentive program, we’ll need to shoot at least 60% of the movie in Texas. So sorry, Harry, you’re gonna be tripping over predators this fall.