20th Century Fox has yet to reveal any concrete The Predator plot details, but now the film’s co-star Thomas Jane (The Punisher, The Mist) has spilled a few beans to Shadow Nation (via Bloody Disgusting) that fills in the backstory of the team going after said Predators.
“We play these veterans from like Afghanistan, Iraq war or whatever,” said Jane. “But we’re all fucking crazy so we go to the VA hospital to get our meds. We’re all like shellshocked, PTSD… soldiers. We’re at the VA hospital and we’re in group therapy and of course, somebody flips out…this is backstory, I don’t think we really see this…somebody flips out and we all get arrested and get thrown onto the bus to go down to the hospital and they throw this other guy on the bus too. And he’s a guy they’ve actually marked to kill him because he’s seen a UFO, he’s seen the Predator ships come down so they lock him up and throw him in with us lunatics. They’re going to take that bus, drive it down to a ditch and shoot us all just to get rid of this one guy. But, of course, we take the bus over and we’re all like ‘f*ck that man, let’s go kill these f*cking Predators ourselves’ and we’re just crazy enough to believe that this guy really did see a UFO and there’s these aliens out there.”
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The cast includes Boyd Holbrook (Narcos, Logan), Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), Keegan-Michael Key (Keanu, Key & Peele), Thomas Jane (The Punisher), Jacob Tremblay (Room), Yvonne Strahovski (Dexter), Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones), Sterling K. Brown (The People vs. O.J. Simpson, This is Us) and Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner).
Director Shane Black, who wrote the script with his Monster Squad co-writer Fred Dekker, previously confirmed that the film remains in the continuity of the first two movies and isn’t a full reboot of the series. He said there is a reference in the script as to why the film has a singular title, and that the film will carry an R rating.
The original Predator was directed by John McTiernan and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leader of a United States special forces team that comes under attack from an alien entity that prizes the thrill of the hunt above all else. It was followed by a direct sequel, Predator 2, in 1990 before crossing over with Fox’s Alien franchise for two additional sequels, Alien vs. Predator and AvP: Requiem. In 2010, Nimrod Antal helmed a reboot with a new feature, Predators.
The Predator will be released in theaters on August 3, 2018.