Six Years Before Predator: Badlands, Disney Axed a Finished Predator Series

While everyone is busy buzzing about the next Predator movie, here is the sci-fi curveball that keeps rattling around my brain: years before all this, Fox actually finished a 10-episode Alien vs. Predator anime... and then shelved it when Disney took over. Yes, finished. Yes, sitting in a vault. No, you have not seen it. Let me unpack this very strange saga.

The short version of the long-lost AvP anime

• Former 20th Century Fox licensing director Joshua Izzo says he produced a 10-episode Alien vs. Predator anime series that is fully completed: mixed, finished, done. He revealed it on a special Alien Day episode of the Perfect Organism Podcast. In his words:
  

  "There is, sitting at Disney now, at 20th Studios, 10 episodes of a fully completed Alien vs. Predator anime series that I produced. It’s done. It’s in the can. It’s mixed; it’s finished."

• It was story-cracked and produced creatively by Eric Calderon and Dave Baker.
• The pitch was for a direct-to-DVD animated series—either Alien or AvP—to avoid waiting around for a theatrical window. The plan was to split the 10 episodes across three DVDs.
• Timeline-wise, it was set after the events of Alien vs. Predator and Alien: Resurrection (Alien 4).
• Shinji Aramaki directed. If the name rings a bell: Starship Troopers: The Animated Series, Halo Legends, Appleseed, Blade Runner: Black Lotus.
• Calderon (Afro Samurai: Resurrection) and Baker served as writers and story consultants.
• Story details (as later discussed by Baker and Calderon on the Best TV Never Made podcast): a teenage engineer ends up protecting a 6-year-old girl named Leen, echoing a Ripley/Newt dynamic. The teen is ultimately revealed to be a genetically modified alien-human hybrid who can control xenomorphs via pheromones.
• There is a parallel plot about Hank, a soldier modeled on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch from Predator, dealing with PTSD after a past encounter. The same Predator returns to finish their fight. This Yautja is nicknamed Einhander because it only has one hand—an idea inspired by the Ahab Predator from the Dark Horse comics.
• The main human antagonist is a slick corporate type named Fairbanks who inevitably betrays the heroes—very in the tradition of Aliens.

So why bury a finished show?

Izzo did not give a single smoking-gun reason, but he offered a few very plausible ones. Inside Fox at the time, AvP as a brand had a stink on it thanks to the underperformance of the two live-action films. He also said Disney absolutely knows this series exists and may have wanted to keep Alien and Predator separate for a while following the merger. According to Izzo, distribution was not the problem:

"Netflix was interested, so was Hulu. We actually had distribution ready to go but because the larger studio had these two feature films utilizing the macro Alien and Predator intellectual properties, the animation got back burnered and they said 'we’ll revisit this at another time.'"

On the creative side, Baker and Calderon later admitted they had issues with how the final product lined up with where the franchises were heading. Their take: it felt like a throwback to a 90s version of AvP—familiar scenes, design choices that did not evolve with newer entries like Alien: Covenant—and overall a step backward if released in the late 2010s. In other words, the thing was polished and complete, but maybe not in step with the current franchise mood.

What this means for Alien and Predator right now

If you are wondering how we ended up here: this all happened around 2019 as Disney folded Fox into the mothership. Priorities shifted. Big-screen plans moved forward. An already-finished animated series quietly got parked.

For context on why the AvP label might have been a tough sell internally: Paul W. S. Anderson’s Alien vs. Predator (2004) has a 21% score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 64 on Metacritic, and a 5.7/10 on IMDb. The follow-up, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) from the Strause brothers, sits at 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, 29 on Metacritic, and 4.6/10 on IMDb. Fans still show up for the monsters, but in studio speak, that is not exactly a greenlight magnet.

About that Predator movie timeline confusion

You might have seen mentions of Predator: Badlands already getting raves, and also that it releases in the US on November 7, 2025. Those two ideas do not match. The date given is November 7, 2025, which means the wide release is still ahead. Also floating around is a nod to Predator: Killer of Killers as a way to scratch the Predator itch in the meantime. Point is: lots of Predator activity in development, but the AvP anime remains stuck in the vault.

Will we ever see the AvP anime?

Never say never. It is finished. It existed far enough along that streamers reportedly wanted it. If the planets (and corporate strategies) line up, it would not take much to push play. For now, though, it is one of those fully cooked, never-served projects that franchise fans only hear about on podcasts.