Predator: Badlands Goes PG-13—Will The Hunt Still Bite?
Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands just scored a PG-13 from the Motion Picture Association, setting up a wider hunt for the sci-fi saga’s next chapter.
Surprise: the next Predator movie is officially PG-13. I know, that sounds wrong for a franchise that usually paints the jungle red, but stick with me — the way they built this one actually makes the rating make sense.
Trachtenberg is quietly becoming the Predator guy
Back in February 2024, Disney/20th Century confirmed that Dan Trachtenberg — the director behind Prey — would be the first filmmaker to steer two Predator features. His new live-action film is titled Predator: Badlands, written by Prey screenwriter Patrick Aison from a story Trachtenberg came up with.
While that was happening, Trachtenberg also cooked up an animated anthology movie called Predator: Killer of Killers. He wrote that one with Micho Robert Rutare and co-directed it with Josh Wassung from the animation outfit The Third Floor. That dropped on Hulu earlier this year. So yes, he has effectively made three Predator projects: Prey, the animated Killer of Killers, and now Badlands.
What Badlands actually is
The official setup: Badlands takes place in the future on a remote planet, where a young Predator outcast teams up with Thia, played by Elle Fanning, and sets off on a dangerous hunt for the ultimate opponent. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is inside the lead Predator suit. Producers are John Davis, Dan Trachtenberg, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, and Brent O'Connor.
There is a character wrinkle here that is not your typical Predator fare. A casting brief said one of the movie’s two main storylines digs into the relationship between two very different sisters whose family bond gets stress-tested as they chase conflicting goals. The production was specifically looking for a performer to play both twins, Thia and Tessa: the role was open to a female or non-binary actor, any ethnicity, anywhere from mid 20s to mid 40s.
The twins themselves are opposites by design. Thia has spent most of her life in a lab and is just now stepping into the wider world — she is brilliant, fast with a joke, unshakeable, and a little oblivious to danger not because she is fearless, but because she does not know any better. Comedy chops required. Tessa, on the other hand, has a militant edge and will plow through anything to achieve the family mission, including her own sister.
Elle Fanning ended up taking both roles. One extra nerdy detail: at least for Thia, she literally has the Weyland-Yutani logo printed on her eyeballs. Yes, that Weyland-Yutani.
- Predator: Badlands hits theaters November 7, 2025
- Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong sci-fi violence (now official)
- Setting: the future, on a remote planet
- Leads: Elle Fanning as twins Thia and Tessa; Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as the young Predator
- Creative: Directed by Dan Trachtenberg; screenplay by Patrick Aison from a story by Trachtenberg
- Producers: John Davis, Dan Trachtenberg, Marc Toberoff, Ben Rosenblatt, Brent O'Connor
- Meanwhile: Predator: Killer of Killers (animated) is already streaming on Hulu; written by Trachtenberg and Micho Robert Rutare, co-directed by Trachtenberg and Josh Wassung (The Third Floor)
About that PG-13
There were whispers a couple weeks ago that Badlands might sneak by with PG-13. Now the MPAA has stamped it. Producer Ben Rosenblatt basically explained the calculus to IGN before it became official — no humans means no human blood, which changes the ratings math. Here is how he put it:
"We don't have any humans in the movie and so we don't have any human red blood. So we're hoping that's gonna play to our advantage. We're going to go as hard as we possibly can within those constraints, and we think we'll be able to do some pretty awesomely gruesome stuff. But in colors other than red."
When you take humans out of the equation, you also remove most F-bombs and a lot of the ratings-triggering gore. If the violence is creature-on-creature (or creature-on-synthetic), a PG-13 becomes much more achievable — and that is exactly what happened here.
Bottom line
Badlands is aiming to expand the Predator universe in a weird, intriguing way: future setting, no human cast, a young outcast Predator partnering with a lab-raised woman who has corporate logos in her eyes, and an actress playing combative twins. The PG-13 might sound like a buzzkill, but given the premise, it is more of a strategic pivot than a softening. If they can deliver gnarly action without the red stuff, I am in.