PREY Director Dan Trachtenberg Reveals Abandoned Plans For Predator-Free Marketing Campaign (Exclusive)

Prey has been in development since even before the critical analysis of 2018 The predator was released, with director Dan Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison first approaching franchise producer John Davis with their idea for a reboot in 2016. The film was accelerated a few years later and eventually revealed itself as the name “Skulls”.

All we knew at the time was that it would “follow a Comanche woman who goes against gender norms and traditions to become a warrior.” However, it didn’t take long for online sleuths to figure out that skulls was actually a code name for a new chapter of the Predator franchise.

The cat was officially out of the bag, although Trachtenberg has previously indicated that he plans to market Prey without ever referring to the iconic alien. Speaking to us about the film earlier this week, the filmmaker revealed that we would have saw the Predator in marketing, but not until a second trailer was released (which culminates with the big reveal).

“It’s almost impossible” he says in the video above of any attempt to keep the Predator’s role secret. “Certainly what would have been exciting was in the initial pitch of the movie was that the first trailer wouldn’t have a title. You would see Naru’s setup, what she’s going through in her tribe , and her leaving to prove herself. When she left for the woods, there was a fire in the sky, and that would be it.

“Then, closer to the movie’s release, we would see a fuller trailer that would include the bear chasing her and then being lifted by the Predator. That would have been the announcement of what this movie was all about,” Trachtenberg continues. “It was my favorite version of when it came out, so you’d have that secret movie excitement, but not go all the way because people need to know what movie they’re going to see.”

It’s a real shame that didn’t happen, though. PreyHulu’s streaming debut resulted in a different kind of marketing campaign than it likely would have received with a theatrical release.

While the movie hasn’t exactly been “dumped” on any streaming platform, it looks like Disney may have been hesitant to put on another. Predator movie in theaters after the franchise’s decline under 20th Century Fox. Given extremely positive reactions to Prey so far, however, something tells us that may change in the future.

Prey is set to premiere on Hulu on August 5.