Badlands’ teases potential Schwarzenegger return to franchise

Arnold Schwarzenegger (might) be back.

The star the 1987 supernatural action classic Predator may be headed back toward the franchise, which has since spawned six sequels and two crossover films with the Alien franchise. Ben Rosenblatt, a producer on the latest entry in that blood-soaked saga, Predator: Badlandsrecently said he and the Badlands crew have been circling the wagons around that very prospect.

“Obviously, the holy grail of Predator movies would be getting Arnold back in there,” he told Deadline at Monday’s premiere on the red carpet of the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. “It’s always been something in the back of our minds — that it would be really great to see him come back to this franchise that he’s made iconic, and that’s made him iconic.”

Rosenblatt and Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg aren’t new to the Predator franchise, having produced and directed both 2019’s Prey and the animated Predator: Killer of Killerswhich released earlier this year. Schwarzenegger lent his voice to that latter film for a cameo role, and with franchise producer John Davis aboard, the Austrian actor’s live-action return isn’t such a long shot.

“Arnold and Dan have met a couple of times now. He’s been really interested in what we’re doing, he’s a real fan of what we’ve done so far, from what I understand,” Rosenblatt continued. “We’re really excited. After Predator: Badlands comes out, we’ll see and have more conversations. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to do something with Arnold, because that would be awesome.”

Trachtenberg also teased the new film’s crossover with the Alien franchise, telling Deadline, “Badlands itself is definitely a crossover in that we have the Weyland-Yutani corporation as a huge part of the movie. Elle Fanning plays a Weyland-Yutani synth.”

The director told EW in July that fans shouldn’t expect the film to be a full Predator–Alien crossover event: “It is exciting to have this movie be just a little toe-dip link between those franchises. It’s important to me — I am sure people anticipate a much bigger thing, and maybe other movies and other cinematic universes would be more aggressive — but I really didn’t want to take all the action figures and smush them together. I really wanted to tell a cool story.”

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Schwarzenegger secured the role as Alan “Dutch” Schaefer long after he’d proven himself a capable movie star, not merely an alluring stunt-casting opportunity from the world of professional bodybuilding.

Dutch is a typical Schwarzenegger hero — all rippling muscle and bravery — but with a humane integrity that compels him to keep his team safe. His paramilitary rescue team deploys to a Central American jungle to save a stranded government official when they encounter the superhumanoid killing machine known as the Predator.

Though Predator proved a smash success at the box office and drew positive notices for Schwarzenegger, the actor and former California governor didn’t return for a sequel or other franchise film until Killer of Killers 38 years later.

Technically, Schwarzenegger returned to the character even earlier than this year’s animated sequel. In 2020, players of the Hunting Grounds video game were given the option to purchase a DLC allowing them to play as Dutch, with narration recorded by Schwarzenegger himself.

“The premise of it is (Dutch) recorded these tapes since ’87 after the first movie,” Jared Gerritzen, a key creative collaborator behind Hunting Grounds told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “Throughout these tapes, there are those arrows (pointing to) what he’s doing, kind of like safeguards if he gets killed or captured. These tapes are gonna be used to essentially keep his story going.”

Predator: Badlands opens wide in theaters on Friday, Nov. 7.