Popverse's top stories of the day

• Milhouse lives! What will happen to The Simpsons after voice actor Pamela Hayden's retirement?
• Watch the official Dragon Ball DAIMA panel from NYCC 2024!
• Before Doctor Doom takes over the MCU, he's taking over Marvel Comics with 2025's One World Under Doom

Even if you've never seen one of its movies, you know that 'sneaking up on people' is kind of a big thing for the Predator. Whether he's actually invisible or just using his environment as camouflage, the freaky-faced extraterrestrial hunter excels at popping up where you don't expect him... like, for example, the 2025 film slate. Bonkers as this next statement is going to sound, 20th Century Studios has apparently already made a secret Predator movie, and its on its way to streaming sooner rather than later.

Let's take a step back. The first thing you should know is that this movie is not Predator: Badlands, the follow up to Dan Trachtenberg's smash-hit Prey (streaming now on Hulu). Badlands isn't a secret at all; it was announced in February of this year, and scheduled to hit theaters in November 2025. What we're talking about here is a different Predator movie, which was revealed by 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, a snippet of which I've posted here:

Asbell: After Prey became a success, Dan [Trachtenberg] came back and said he didn’t want to do Prey 2. And we’re like, 'What do you want to do?' And he rattled off a bunch of ideas that were really crazy but really cool. We’ve actually done two of them. Two are coming out next year.

[...]

THR: So there’s a secret Predator movie—  

Asbell: There’s a secret Predator movie that will come out before the theatrical one but I can’t say anything about yet.

I'm sorry, what? Asbell apparently went to the J.K. Rowling School for Randomly Dropping Franchise-Changing Information (without, you know, the transphobia), because that is so far out of the realm of expectation that I'm having trouble understanding what it could mean.

Seriously, what could a secret Predator film look like? The one tidbit of info we got about it form the interview is that, like Badlands, it was also directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who is a serious contender for king of the franchise at this point ("In Dan we trust," is an actual quote from Asbell). We also know that the movie has to come out before November 7, 2025, which we just recently learned was the Predator: Badlands release date. But what time period could it be set in? Who is it starring? Besides Predators, what the hell is it about??

I obviously can't answer any of these and, as the interview proves, Steve Asbell isn't going to either. BUT (and this is just me speculating here), I want to point this out before we go: 

If you're going to make a secret movie, one that you don't have to hide any sets or reveal any actors, it seems the best way to do that would be do make it animated. Could that be the case here? I guess we'll just have to see.

Or, not see. Depends on whether Predator's invisible, I guess.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." We couldn't agree more, which is why we think you should check out horror aficionado Greg Silber's list of the best horror movies of all time. Or, if you've already seen those classics, check out our list of the most underrated horror movies from the past couple years. And if you've already seen all of those, Let us tell you what to look forward to (or dread) in Popverse's list of upcoming horror movies.