In a new Q&A with Empire (embedded below, and quoted herein via The Playlist), The Nice Guys director Shane Black has revealed some interesting new details about 2018's The Predator.
For starters, it doesn't sound like Schwarzenegger's going to be headlining this thing. Says Black:
"The hero of the new one, the name I’ve given the guy in Predator right now, is Quinn Mackenna. And that may change."
As far as I can recall, this is the first time Black's uttered the name of The Predator's lead character. Of course that doesn't mean that Schwarzenegger's out of the picture entirely (circumstantial evidence suggests that Dutch will have some sort of cameo in the film), and yes, Black himself points out that this may change...but for the time being, I think it's probably safe to assume that Schwarzenegger won't be the main attraction here.
Black goes on to discuss his future plans in re: to sharing details about The Predator. This doesn't bode well for spoiler junkies:
“We live in a culture where everyone’s like, ‘(I want to) know everything about it before it comes out, and I want to be able to see every moment, and i’m gonna go back and forth on the goddamn YouTube channel and get every goddamn moment and every Easter egg.’ (But) I’ll tell you a little bit about it. It’s an attempt to event-ize the Predator and make it more mysterious.
The Predator has been so overdone in a way — very low budget with a guaranteed return, every couple of years there’s a knock off churned out. It’s gotta get to the point where people buy their tickets in advance instead of saying, ‘Oh honey look, another Predator movie. Nah, no, Adam Sandler’s got this thing on TV let’s do that instead.’ I want people to say, The Predator is coming, I know it’s coming, we want to see it, it’s mysterious, interesting, it’s got the same sense of wonderment and newness that Close Encounters had when that came out.’ That’s what we want. That’s very impossible to achieve, but we’re going to try.”
Well, we certainly wish Black luck with that. Fanboys are a persistent lot, and I think Black can expect a certain amount of nosiness from them once The Predator goes into production. Here's hoping whatever he has planned for us doesn't get spoiled by some asshole with a drone and a Twitter account.
You can hear more from Black in the audio below, or you can head on over to The Playlist for a few more typically-entertaining pull quotes from Black.