Part of the fun of watching the PREDATOR movies is seeing the titular alien take on high profile action stars and familiar badasses. Over the course of the franchise the interstellar hunter-killer has taken on the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, Jesse Ventura, Danny Glover, Bill Paxton, Gary Busey, Danny Trejo, and Laurence Fishburne – and when Predators took on Aliens, Lance Henriksen was caught in the middle.
While director Shane Black has been assembling solid actors and familiar faces for his PREDATOR sequel THE PREDATOR, so far they haven't been actors that I'm especially excited to see face off with the homicidal extraterrestrial. I would have been excited to see Benicio Del Toro, who was once in talks to star in the film, fight a Predator, but when he had to walk away from the project he was replaced with Boyd Holbrook, an actor who doesn't have the same amount of star power just yet. I'm sure Holbrook and his co-stars Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, and Sterling K. Brown will do a fine job, for me they just stir up less hype than some of the actors I listed above did.
Now comes word that THE PREDATOR is about to add an established action badass into the mix, and my hype level is on the rise. THE PUNISHER himself Thomas Jane is in final negotiations to join the cast. Details on his character were not revealed, but hopefully his part will involve him going into battle with Predators (since there are going to be multiple Predators in this film, not just one) while toting some impressive firepower.
We do know that Holbrook, Rhodes, and Key are playing ex-Marines, with Munn as a scientist and Brown as a government agent.
Written by Black and Fred Dekker, THE PREDATOR is set to start filming in Vancouver next month for a February 9, 2018 release.