Predator Reboot Is Coming From Iron Man 3’s Shane Black, Optimism Remains

He ain't got time to bleed, but he does have time to reboot.

By Nick Venable | Updated 10 years ago

Let’s all start one off by taking one big necessary sigh while grumbling about Hollywood never having any new ideas. Most of us are going to do this instinctively, and it’s best to just get that negative energy out of the room right away. 20th Century Fox is heading back into the jungle to reboot their Predator series, and they’ve found what might be the perfect action filmmaker to bring the franchise back to life, signing Lethal Weapon screenwriter and Iron Man 3 director Shane Black to get the choppas in the air. Reboot news rarely gets this good, people. Let’s bleed it for everything it’s worth.

Black will write the first treatment for Predator before sending it on to his Monster Squad co-writer and director Fred Dekker. The RoboCop 3 director will officially pen the first draft, which Black will oversee. Black is also attached to direct at this point, but nothing has been set in iron stone just yet. If that happens, this would be just his third directorial effort. It was strange enough when he went from the truly excellent low-budget indie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to Marvel’s second-highest grossing superhero movie, and heading a major action reboot is just as surprising a career move for Black. And I love it.

As you can imagine, there aren’t any story details floating around just yet. I don’t think I’m overstepping my boundaries as a non-psychic in assuming the movie will center on a team of commandos who have to hunt down a badass alien beast. The difference will be in the location and the backstory of the characters. Black’s entire resume consists of memorable characters, so we probably don’t have too much to worry about.

Predator fans might remember that Black actually had a role in the film as Hawkins. This was right when the Lethal Weapon and Monster Squad scripts had pushed Black into the upper stratosphere, and producers Joel Silver and Jon Davis wanted him to touch up the Predator script, though he never did. He later worked with Predator director John McTiernan on 1991’s still underrated satirical adventure Last Action Hero.

While 2010’s Predators was surprisingly more enjoyable than it probably should have been, I’m perfectly willing to forget that the Alien vs. Predator movies exist. So getting another Predator standalone movie doesn’t sound all that absurd to me. It’s just a matter of when it will happen, as Black is currently busy prepping a Doc Savage adaptation for Sony. I guess another question would be, “Is Arnold Schwarzenegger also going to shoehorn his way into this one?”

Do you guys think Black is the right guy for the job where a Predator reboot is concerned? Let us know in the poll below.

[yop_poll id=”45″]

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