Let Us Prey

A “MIDLIFE CRISIS” BROUGHT SHANE BLACK BACK TO THE PREDATOR UNIVERSE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 30 YEARS – AND, AS HE TELLS RICHARD EDWARDS, HE’S OUT TO MAKE CINEMA’S ULTIMATE HUNTER SCARY AGAIN

- Calum Waddell

SHANE BLACK DIDN’T MAKE IT TO THE end of the original Predator. Starring as the wisecracking Hawkins – the youngest member of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s elite team of soldiers – he was the first to be eliminated, the most expendable role in an ensemble where life expectancies were, by dramatic necessity, a tad limited.

Now, some 31 years later, Black’s making a return to the killer alien saga as director and writer with the efficiently titled The Predator.

“The thing is, I didn’t really consider myself to be an essential part of the first Predator!” he confides to SFX when we meet in a San Diego hotel, the day before the film’s Comic-Con panel. “I know it makes for a good point of reference in a story, but really I was just there to observe and get murdered as quickly as possible. So I really didn’t expect to revisit it.

“But I will tell you I was surprised by its longevity,” he continues. “The [Predator] costume was cobbled together in a period of weeks by Stan Winston. The title ‘Predator’ was just an afterthought when they said, ‘We can’t call it The Hunter, because there’s a show by that name.’ And yet these seemingly very 11th hour decisions ended up generating these concepts which have lingered in the zeitgeist for over 30 years. I suppose there was always a vector in place that I would inevitably be confronted with it some day!”