Keegan-Michael Key: The Predator is neither sequel nor remake

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

People really seem to be struggling to figure out what they should call THE PREDATOR, director Shane Black's upcoming addition to the PREDATOR franchise. Articles have referred to it as a reboot or a remake, Black himself has called it an "inventive sequel", and yet the film's star Boyd Holbrook has disagreed, saying outright that "it's not a sequel" – according to him, Black and co-writer Fred Dekker (with whom Black wrote THE MONSTER SQUAD thirty years ago) have made "something totally new" here.

Maybe Holbrook's co-star Keegan-Michael Key can help us figure out what this movie is.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Key said: 

Predator was a real privilege to do, and if people think they’re going to see a remake of the original movie, they’re in for a surprise. A very pleasant surprise."

Okay, so it's definitely not a remake. We can strike that label from the options. Key continued: 

It’s not a sequel. It certainly lives in the universe of the five films that were made. I think that’s probably the best way to say it and the only way I can say it right now."

So it's a film that follows the five existing PREDATOR films… but it's not a sequel? Back in my day, "sequel" is the term we tended to use when a movie followed others in a series, but it's obvious that the label "sequel" has been a bit tarnished over the years. People try so hard to avoid using it sometimes.

When PREDATORS was released, it was often referred to as a "reboot", even though it also existed in the same universe as the movies that came before it. The term "reboot" makes a little more sense when a film doesn't contain any direct references to the ones that preceded it, but we know that THE PREDATOR is embracing its connection to the earlier films. Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked to make a cameo and declined, and Jake Busey is playing the son of the character his father played in PREDATOR 2.

I think we should just listen to the director. It doesn't matter if THE PREDATOR is a continuation of specific storylines or not. An "inventive sequel" that exists in an established universe is still a sequel.

Sorry, Keegan-Michael Key.

Holbrook, Key, and Busey are joined in the cast of THE PREDATOR by Thomas Jane, Trevante Rhodes, Augusto Aguilera, Jacob Tremblay, Yvonne Strahovski, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Alfie Allen, and Edward James Olmos. The film is scheduled to reach theatres on August 3, 2018.