Earlier this year we brought you the very exciting news that, following the success of his standalone Predator film Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg would be making more movies centred around everyone's favourite extraterrestrial big game hunter. And now the first of those movies, Badlands, seems to have found its star. According to Deadline, Elle Fanning is in talks to join the Yautjans' latest hunt.
Plot details for the latest standalone Predator-verse joint are currently being kept under lock and key, beyond the obvious admission that Badlands will in fact feature a Predator (and sadly probably not Bruce Springsteen, nor Terrence Malick — boo!). We do, however, know that Badlands has been co-written by Trachtenberg alongside his Prey story partner and scribe Patrick Aison, and that unlike its predecessor, this one's expected to be set in the future. While the future setting rules out Badlands being a direct follow-up to Trachtenberg's 1719-set, Amber Midthunder starring last film, it seems Prey 2 is still in the works too.
With cameras set to roll on Badlands later this year – with Trachtenberg once again on directing duties – we're hopeful the sci-fi actioner might make an appearance on our screens sometime next year. And, given the critical and streaming success of Prey, we wouldn't be surprised if this one got a proper theatrical release too. In the meantime however, we'll next be seeing Fanning in James Mangold's upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, and if you really can't wait for your next fix of alien-based legacy franchise action, then Fede Álvarez' facehugger fest Alien Romulus is mere months away. Could Badlands and Romulus somehow be connected? Could we be heading for an all-new Alien Vs Predator? We can but dream...