Prey director promises a scarier, more 'ferocious and feral' Predator

Dan Trachtenberg is ready to prey on your fears.

During a visit to EW's Comic-Con video suite Thursday, the Prey director and his cast discussed their upcoming action film, which marks the latest installment of the venerable Predator series. Set three centuries before the events of the original Predator movie, Prey promises to put a new spin on the franchise while offering a wilder take on the extraterrestrial trophy hunter.

"Since we were going 300 years in the past, I felt like there was a little bit of license to change it up a little bit," Trachtenberg teased. "What was so special about the original 1987 movie was you were surprised by [the Predator] every step of the way. It was surprising to see it in its cloaked form. It was surprising to see it when it was decloaked and in its bio-mask, and yet again at the end of the film, there was still more surprises. And I really wanted to even have diehard fans of the franchise by watching this movie to be surprised."

Trachtenberg went on to note that the element of surprise has been missing from some of the franchise's entries. "Frankly, there have been a lot of vestiges from that movie and in all the sequels that it has felt very 'man-in-suit-y,'" he said. "Very much like there's a professional wrestler lumbering around. I wanted it to feel far scarier, way more alien-creature-like, ferocious and feral."

Former pro basketball player Dane DiLiegro helped Trachtenberg accomplish that vision by donning the Predator suit. "The weight of this character was immense, more immense than anything I've had to deal with," he said. "I weighed over 300 pounds with everything on. The head alone was 15 pounds. For the Predator to look forward, I had to look down at the ground through two tiny holes in the neck. I was essentially shooting this movie blind."

Another element that distinguishes Prey is its expansive cast of Native American and First Nations performers. The film centers on Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche warrior who fights to protect her tribe from one of the first highly evolved Predators to land on Earth.

The film features sequences in Comanche dialogue, and there will be an option for a Comanche-language version while viewing the film on Hulu. Newcomer Dakota Beavers is just one member of the largely Indigenous cast, and he's making his screen debut doing all his own stunts, including horseback riding and extensive fight scenes.

Trachtenberg noted that everyone in the cast who is playing a Native American or First Nations character comes from that background. Producer Jhane Myers also quipped that there are "a few Frenchmen thrown in there for diversity."

For Midthunder, whose previous credits include Roswell and Legion, the film was an opportunity to represent her people and culture authentically. "The thing personally that I'm most proud of when it comes to the movie is the representation and the accuracy," she said. "Because so rarely, especially in a period piece, do you get to see a variety of indigenous characters. Oftentimes if we get anything, it's usually one subhuman, overly spiritualized, or hyper-savage, violent, one-dimensional character — caricature almost."

She added, "So rarely do you get to see a multitude of people with full personalities and intellect and relationships. And it also gets to show that — in this time of our history, we're not represented as being intelligent or innovative or even really well-kept in terms of hygiene, but that is the truth of history, is that we were."

Watch the video above for more. Prey hits Hulu Aug. 5.

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