Trivia / Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

• Christmas Rushed: The film was timed to be released in 2007 on Christmas Day, and had an appropriately-themed marketing campaign ("This Christmas, there will be no peace on earth").
• Focus Group Ending: Several alternate endings were scripted, with some even filmed. Ricky was originally going to be impaled and ripped in half by the Predalien inside the hospital, but a negative test screening led to the scene being re-shot with him merely being wounded. The Predalien was originally going to die when Wolf impales its head with its own inner jaw. Finally, an alternate ending was shot where the survivors are found by the Special Forces in the end, and are all killed to ensure that there are no witnesses. This scene was also re-shot because it was felt to be too depressing.
• Franchise Killer: Its bad critical reception and even worse fan reception together made sure that, if there was any hope of continuing the saga after the potentially interesting points opened by the first move, it got lost like tears in rain. Even though Predators revived significantly the interest of the crowd towards the Yautja and even made a nod to AvP, it's quite improbable we will get to see Aliens and Predators together on screen again.
• Production Nickname:
  • The "cleaner" Predator was nicknamed "Wolf" - a reference to Harvey Keitel's similarly employed character in Pulp Fiction. The crew also called the Predalien "Chet" after Bill Paxton's character in Weird Science.
  • The Predalien's nickname is joked about in one of the Making Of featurettes by the Brother Strause, "What's the biggest asshole you think of? It's Chet. A guy named Chet."
• Scully Box: As revealed in the Special Effects commentary tracks for Requiem's special edition, this was used to make the 6'2 Tom Woodruff Jr.'s Predalien tower over the 7'1 Ian Whyte's Predator.
• Troubled Production: Production wasn't too bad all things considered, but suffered from a low budget — most infamously resulting in an on-set clip of the film's cinematographer angrily bemoaning the near-nonexistent lighting budget he had, which went viral a couple of years later — and Executive Meddling that firstly demanded that the film take place in a modern-day urban setting, and secondly forced the Predalien to be hastily expanded into the main villain at a late stage in the writing process. The inexperience of directors Colin and Greg Strause, who had long careers as effects designers but had never actually directed a feature film, also didn't help much.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film had several different scripts before the producers settled on one they wanted. Of note is an early treatment by Shane Salerno where the Predator ship crashes in Afghanistan, and a Special Forces team must stop the Predalien. Also of note is an early draft where the Predalien is killed off a few minutes into the film, Wolf would also be killed by two aliens.
  • As mentioned on the main page, the Brothers Strause mention on the commentary that they had an idea of a Downer Ending where after handing off the Predator weapon to the military, the "rescuers" lifted up their weapons and the screen would cut to black with the sound of the rifles firing full-auto. Ouch.
  • Similarly, on the commentary, they mention that Colonel Stevens was originally supposed to be Garber from Predator 2, but talks with Adam Baldwin fell through.
  • Bill Paxton was approached to play the diner chef, so he could appear in the second film in each franchise. However, scheduling conflicts prevented him from making an appearance.
  • Danny Glover was considered to reprise his role as Mike Harrigan from Predator 2, now retired.
  • Betty Gilpin auditioned for the role of Jesse Salinger.
  • In the original plans, the Predalien inherited some behavior as well as physical traits from the Predators, like taking hunting trophies.
  • Kelly was supposed to get more action scenes, specifically one showing her gunning down aliens as they made their way to the hospital (a scene which makes their insistence at getting guns and using the helicopter to escape instead of just driving out of town make for more sense since the roads were intended to be swarming with xenomorphs) but Executive Meddling forced them to drop the scene to focus more on the male lead as the action hero.
  • An early concept for the film would have had the survivors taking on Aliens inside a Wal-Mart.
  • There was a cut subplot with several scenes of a couple children having several close encounters with the xenomorphs throughout the movie. Once such scene were the children gaining the attention of the Predalien in the hospital, distracting it from the babies it had been looking at, and then having to hide from it to survive.

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