Predator: Badlands will introduce Yautja Prime, Predator language & expand the lore!

Dan Trachtenberg is going to heavily expand and tap into Yautja lore with Predator: Badlands this year! During a special preview event held for members of the press, Trachtenberg touched on a number of exciting details, including the name of the main Predator in Badlands, developing a complete Yautja language and other areas of the Predator lore he plans to expand on!

A number of outlets have transcribed what Dan said and ComicBook have provided one detailed account that covers a lot of exciting new information:

That’s one of the cool things of the movie, is that, outside of very brief glimpses in other films, we’re on Yautja Prime, what is known as Yautja Prime mainly from extended universe stuff. There’s a lot in this movie that is more from the extended universe than is from things that are properly in the movie. I should mention the language. We, insanely, decided to really treat that properly and worked with, we reached out to the guy who does the Na’vi language [in Avatar], who was very occupied, and recommended his mentee. We did it the way that, for The Lord of the Rings, you would do Elvish, for Game of Thrones, you do Dothraki. Except for those, there’s more precedent, for us, there’s very little. As we discovered, with him being a language expert, all the stuff, and frankly, actually working with [Predator special effects artist] Alec Gillis, all the stuff that you’ve seen in other Predator movies is complete garbage. There’s no sense of it. People from the Internet have tried to make sense of it, but none of it was made with intention.

So we decided to make it with intention and we completely developed the language, so everything they’re speaking has actual rules and structure and all that stuff. And written as well as verbal. Very early on, we just did explorations, concept art explorations of what Yautja could be. I wanted to be very careful in making this, that I not fall into a trap that is making something that is more lore-focused than story-focused. I think, lots of times, when people do more in a franchise, there’s a tendency to really go whole hog into the Senate trading committees and whatever. I thought we should just have a little sliver of that, but not let the movie be like, there could be some expectation when people hear the premise that the movie is going to be all about the inner workings of the Yautja culture and that’s not — we wanted to still make it feel genre, feel very specific. Really, what it is, it’s an inversion of the premise of now the Predator is on a planet. He’s going to be hunted by things and has to use his guile to figure out stuff. While we were writing, we were doing concept art and things like that to figure out the world-building of it all.

Additionally, we also learned that the Predator face visual effects are being handled by Weta Workshop and that the new Predator suit will be worn by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi:

We did a very new thing with the creature. The thing that’s been special about Predator is that it’s had practical suit effects. It’s one of the first big pioneers of that art. All the movies have featured that craft. The problem is that … when we did some early tests for this movie, we realized the obvious thing, is that it’s typically a horror character. It pops out of the shadows for a few seconds and we see glimpses and it’s cloaked for so often. This movie, you really wanted people to connect with Dek. Unfortunately, the rotors that go inside the mask that is usually adorned for the Predator not only affects all the physicality of the creature, so it makes people move a certain way, but also it just does not have the articulation to bring people in and connect to a creature. We were trying to do this thing of, we want you to bond with a horrific-looking creature. The methodology was a guy in a suit, and you’re seeing suit, the whole thing, other than his face. The face is all digital, largely handled by Weta Workshop.

The thing I should have mentioned, that I think is very cool about how we’re treating the faces — the CG is so that, we expressed this in Prey, where we had some [scenes] we would augment a lot,” the director clarified. “There was a lot of handover between the practical and digital, like in his hands and picking up things and things you would never notice. Some things, unfortunately, were a little bit noticeable. A lot of that, it was when we went to a face occasionally and it became a creature face. The cool of what we’re doing … where it’s digital, it’s meant to match the suit. So it’s not matching creature flesh, it’s matching his suit, which has a look to it, which WÄtÄ makes amazingly, and should feel like an alien creature, but it’s still a little different than like when you see a full CG Gollum or any alien creature in any cool Alien. It’s that flesh is different than suit, and so the face perfectly blends in and is matching that suit quality. So, hopefully, it looks like real material.

Not only that, we also have a name for the protagonist Yautja in Predator: Badlands, he will be officially named Dek:

Let me tell you, this guy, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi is the actor’s name. We had a very specific casting for Dek. We thought we would want a stunt guy and this was a real opportunity, because all the other Predators need to be like seven-foot-six. It’s very specific people that aren’t often trained stuntmen,” Trachtenberg pointed out. “They happen to be that size and they decide to get into this business. [Prey star] Dane [DiLiegro] did want to be in the business, but he also was an ex-basketball player, he was the one who played the feral in Prey. Here, it was the first time I was like, ‘Oh, we can get a proper stunt guy to be the guy who can move in the ways…’ And at one of our castings, we had a number of stunt guys and then this dude Dimitrius came up and the way he moved just had a great swashbuckle to it. He just was so cool. We set up a little physical obstacle course. That’s how we cast him. Then he did some dramatic stuff from the movie and it was awesome. I was not at all prepared for what he actually does, it’s so … I could not believe, how did we luck into this guy? It’s crazy that we found him. Then he gave so much to the movie and learned the language and, I mean, that language is, not everyone can do it. I can’t do it. I can’t even pretend. You have to make a whatever [click sound] in the back, and he can just do it. He would learn it that morning, if we changed lines or whatever, and it was incredible.

It sounds like Predator: Badlands is going to be Dan Trachtenberg's love letter to the franchise as a whole, expanding on a number of concepts and areas of lore never touched on before.

Predator: Badlands arrives November 7th, 2025! Learn more here!