B-Team Sequel: Aliens vs. Predator 2 was the only Aliens vs. PredatorFirst-Person Shooter game developed by a studio other than Rebellion, with Fox Interactive handing the development over to Monolith Productions, a veteran First Person Shooter developer with a resume of many well-received games under their belt. The resulting game is noticeably more scripted and plot-heavy than Rebellion's entries in the franchise, and has a more stylized artstyle akin to Monolith's No One Lives Forever (whose code base was used as a foundation to develop the game).
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only the original PC game and the 2010 remake are still available, with the other games either staying console exclusive on outdated hardware or are out of print.
Killer App: The Jaguar game was the reason to own that console when it launched, along with Tempest 2000.
What Could Have Been: The Arcade GameAlien vs. Predator was believed to have been based on another film script in development. Considering that you take on an entire army of xenomorphs in the game, and one of the playable characters was a cyborg clone of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character from the original Predator, this would have been a very interesting movie indeed.
Downplayed, but still notably there, in regards to James Cameron. He hated the concept and actually ceased working on the Alien franchise due to it, but after watching the movie, he commented, "It was actually pretty good. I think of the five Alien films, I'd rate it third." Given the poor track record of Alien sequels, this could easily be considered Damned by Faint Praise.
Both Nimrod Antal and Shane Black, directors of Predators and The Predator respectively, consider the AVP duology canon to the Predator series and made it so in their work. Black even planned Dutch and/or Ripley to appear at the ending of his film.
Executive Meddling: The studio wanted a PG-13 Alien vs. Predator film (the "unrated" DVD version ended up being basically the same movie save for several seconds of minor gore restored). This decision was later blamed on notorious Fox executive Tom Rothman, who was also alleged to have demanded present-day Earth be the setting instead of out in space in the future.
Production Nickname: Given their names appear as such in the credits, "Grid" for the head Xenomorph and "Scar" for the lead Predator.
Prop Recycling: The budget didn't allow Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. to create new Xenomorph suits from scratch, thus many were largely refitted costumes and props already used in Alien: Resurrection, explaining why the aliens of this movie look more organic (in Resurrection it had the purpose of reflecting their cloned nature) than the biomechanical beings seen in the earlier Alien films.
Refitted for Sequel: The idea of an alien pyramid containing Xenomorph eggs was conceived by Dan O'Bannon in the original Alien first draft.
Saved from Development Hell: This was a project that had floated around for about ten years. It was only when Paul W.S. Anderson did his verbal pitch to the executives at 20th Century Fox that anyone showed any real interest. So much so, in fact, that they greenlit the film immediately.
Most of the trouble was in actually getting the project to the point where they could film anything. The initial draft was written by Peter Briggs in 1991 and set to go into production once Alien³ had been released, but the rights holders for the two franchises spent the next few years battling out over the direction of the screenplay, resulting in several screenwriters coming and going and various new drafts being produced, but nothing of any real substance being accomplished. Eventually the project slipped into the background, and wasn't revived until 2002, when Paul W.S. Anderson approached the studio about producing the film. Anderson eventually got a workable screenplay by ditching everything bar a few story elements from the original Briggs draft and writing his own story from scratch (with a healthy dose of Executive Meddling, that is).
As with Resurrection, filming was pretty trouble-free, but the studio were convinced that an R-rated film would not be a box-office success and ordered Anderson to make the film PG-13 at most. There was also a spat over the writing credits, which the studio had recommended should go to Briggs and Anderson for the story, and Anderson and Shane Salerno for the screenplay, only for the Writer's Guild to inexplicably deny any form of credit to Briggs or Salerno and instead award co-story credit to Alien writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, who had never been anywhere near the project. The end product was a box-office success, though ironically made less money than the previous year's R-rated crossover Freddy vs. Jason.
A very early script of the film would have had the film take place in the same timespace as the Alien trilogy, just like the comic books. It was reportedly due to Executive Meddling that Paul W.S. Anderson was forced to set it in present time, which was the reason why he chose the Antarctica as a scenary in order to use the most alien-like environment possible on Earth.
At least one early draft was also a direct adaptation of the original Aliens vs. Predator comic, featuring Ryushi and Machiko Noguchi.
Guillermo del Toro was offered the director's chair, but opted to make Hellboy (2004) instead. Likewise Marco Beltrami composed a score for the film that got rejected, and he went on to score Del Toro's Hellboy.
Fox wanted Roland Emmerich to direct the film back in the late 1990s, due to the box-office success of Independence Day, but Emmerich turned down the offer, choosing to work on other projects.
Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri were planning to team up for the film's score, but Goldsmith's battle with cancer (and eventual passing) prevented the pairing from occurring. Interestingly, it would have gone against his belief that there's no need for two composers working in the same film; usually, he only accepted an additional composer if he was pressed for time and couldn't make the deadline (as with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Air Force One).
Unlike Sigourney Weaver from Alien, Arnold Schwarzenegger was willing to work in the crossover under his character of Major Alan "Dutch" Schaeffer from Predator. However, this had to be discarded when he won the recall election to California Governor, as it rendered him unavailable to shoot any films.
The initial script called for five Predators to appear in the film (and be even more killable that they are in the final product), although the number was later reduced to three. The novelization of the film retained this plot point, though.
Some of the script drafts toyed with the idea of Alexa getting on the spaceship and leaving with the Predators for the stars, which would have been a nod to the comic books, where her homologue of Machiko Noguchi travels with the Predators after adopting their culture.
In earlier drafts, Miller managed to escape from the Xenomorphs but still ends up facehugger bait.
At one stage, Peter Weller was approached to appear as John Yutani, the other founder of the infamous Weyland-Yutani, who had planned to send Weyland to his death in the Antarctica and even dispatched an assassin to secure the job, but the role of Yutani was eventually erased from the script in order to keep the plot from becoming too heavy (although some claim this whole trivia was actually a hoax).
Written-In Infirmity: Weyland is frequently heard coughing from "too much excitement" due to his condition. Lance Henriksen was fighting a genuine cold on set.
to appear as John Yutani, the other founder of the infamous Weyland-Yutani, who had planned to send Weyland to his death in the Antarctica and even dispatched an assassin to secure the job, but the role of Yutani was eventually erased from the script in order to keep the plot from becoming too heavy (although some claim this whole trivia was actually a hoax).