Predator: Badlands SFX feature reveals major plot details & teases several easter eggs!

Predator: Badlands NewsBy Chris Sep 10, 2025Comments

Today, SFX Magazine's latest issue featuring a full spread on Dan Trachtenberg's Predator: Badlands became available for purchase and I secured myself a copy. Inside are a number of new production images and photos from the film, as well an extensive interview with Trachtenberg himself and the film's leading actors! I won't reveal everything the magazine includes but I've highlighted a few tantalizing details below to help convince you it's worth the purchase if you weren't already convinced!

First off, Dan Trachtenberg reassures us that the trailers for Predator: Badlands and marketing so far have been pretty restrained. There is plenty about the film we still do not know and that there are many exciting surprises waiting for us.

Plot-wise he does confirm the human looking characters seen in the trailer are in fact an army of Weyland-Yutani synthetics, stuck on Kalisk, trying to deal with the same thing Dek is there to deal with. A quote from the magazine:

Image for Predator: Badlands SFX feature reveals major plot details & teases several easter eggs!

But what it alludes to, what I’ve been putting out there now, is that there aren’t any humans in the movie. So it’s certainly cool, the science fiction idea of it used to be that they would send a colony of humans to a place and they’d give them a synth in previous Alien instalments. It feels more authentic, more science in the fiction, to think that actually they’d probably send some synths out there first to make sure everything’s all right before they send some humans. So there’s definitely a big army of synths on that planet trying to figure out what’s going on there and they are at odds with what Dek is also trying to do there.

Also included is an interview with the film's other lead, Elle Fanning who plays both Thia and Tessa - both Weyland-Yutani synthetics. But speaking only of her Thia character, Fanning explains how she's a bit broken in areas but at the end of the day, she still belongs to a corporation whose motives have not always been for the betterment of mankind:

She’s a part of Weyland-Yutani, and their corporation is a bit corrupt at times. So she’s a little tricky. She definitely has secrets of her own. But she’s funky and spunky and I was glad that I wasn’t just playing a robot in the traditional sense. Of course, there were physicality things – I didn’t have legs, so there was logistically figuring out certain movements and things like that. But we tried to also make her quite human and understanding of emotions, I will say.

Elle also mentioned how during filming for Badlands she had seen Alien: Romulus and really enjoyed seeing Andy, but that nothing from that performance was taken away and used as influence for her character. She suggests her Synth is a little more advanced than the model Andy was in Fede Alvarez's Alien movie.

Image for Predator: Badlands SFX feature reveals major plot details & teases several easter eggs!

The magazine features additional interviews with Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi who plays Dek as well but I won't spoil any of those details in this post.

Without revealing much more, Dan Trachtenberg does mention that there will be no extended or director's cut of Predator: Badlands, but there will be plenty of exciting bonus content which will be included in the film's Blu-Ray release:

There’s tons. I’ll tell you what was really special: Alec Gillis, who’s our creature designer that started out with Stan Winston from the very first Predator and has been with Alien and Predator since their beginning, is also a really charming, funny man. There was this wonderful thing where he collaborated this time with Wētā Workshop. Even though they’ve been around for a while, they still feel like young blood and new school compared to Alec, and it was their first time working on a Predator movie, so Alec went and met up with them. We took some cameras with Alec and I think that will make for a really lovely feature that people can look forward to, not only just because it’s so entertaining, but also there’s just so much history there and so much cool behind the scenes there as well.

There is still plenty more packed inside this month's latest issue of SFX magazine and you can secure your own now at local or online!

Get updates on Predator: Badlands on social media by following us on X, on Instagram and liking our Facebook page!

Dan Trachtenberg's Predator: Badlands released in theaters on November 7th, 2025! Visit the Predator Lore database - for information on the film's different Yautja and characters, the planet Genna, how it connects to Alien, where in the Predator movie timeline the film takes place and more!