In the not so distant past, Latino Review caught word that Nimród Antal was the top choice to direct the Rober Rodriguez-produced reboot Predators for Fox and Troublemaker Studios. Now, this news has been confirmed directly from Rodriguez himself to Ain’t It Cool News.
Antal is still fairly new to the game, but he has directed movies like Kontroll and Vacancy, with another on the way called Armored. The director was among a handful of talents being considered for the job, including Marcus Nispel (Friday the 13th) and Neil Marshall (The Descent). Rodriguez ultimately chose Antal after noticing many impressive skills and virtues that reminded him of a young Quentin Tarantino — most of which was his ability to work with various well-known actors without issue. This trait stood out due to the fact that Rodriguez wants Predators to have strong story as well as a great cast fueling the action flick. He also is putting the work into creating awesome creatures and avoiding CGI as much as humanly possible, which is worthy of celebration.
What’s even better than knowing who the director will be is: finally having a little inside information on this project from Rodriguez himself. He answered some questions for AICN (click the link above to check out all of the questions and answers) which offered some interesting information — including some small hints at how this movie will look.
It appears that this project was really born out of Fox’s realization of how terrible the Alien vs. Predator movies turned out, even after attempting to win some hearts back with an R-rated sequel. When asked about how this project came around, Rodriguez told the story of how Fox is looking to get as far away as humanly possible from AvP:
When I was hired to write the original draft back in 1994, i was only brought on as a writer. I never thought I’d get to work on it in any other capacity. So a few months ago, when Alex Young at Fox contacted me about re-inventing the franchise using my original draft as a template for getting as far away as possible from the AVP movies, I jumped on it. It’s hard to be just a writer on a picture, because you write in some of your really great ideas, and then off they go to someone else and you have no real involvement after that. I was already booked up as a director when this came back to me, but I still wanted to have a hand in making it. So I lobbied to have the movie done through my studios so I could oversee it in a stronger position than a producer usually takes on. Alex came down and saw Troublemaker Studios, and the facilities and crew that I’ve built up over the past 12 years, and he felt right away that this is where the movie should be made and that doing it down here would be the best way to protect it from the studio system. He was keen on making a very “non-studio” picture.
The film maker then went on to give some very simple details on the project and how it may look:
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.
I’m not sure what this “Predator planet” will be like. I don’t necessarily need a jungle like the old movie, but having some forms of water and vegetation seem to feel right with a Predator alien, so I just hope they don’t set it on some Mars-like desolate planet or it will go too Pitch Black on us.
Aside from that, this project now has me pretty excited. I’m not one who loves remakes, but in a time where everything is being remade whether you like it or not, it’s always a treat to see one that kicks a lot of ass.
