Trivia / Predators

• Acting for Two: Stuntman Brian Steele portrays both the Berserker and Falconer Predators.
• Actor-Shared Background: Mombasa is a Muslim, as revealed early in the film when he performs the Salat (daily prayer) while the group takes a break in the scene where Royce notes that the sun has not moved since their arrival. In real life, Mahershala Ali is a Muslim himself.
• B-Team Sequel: Alan Silvestri was asked to write the film's score, but could not due to scheduling conflicts with The A-Team.
• Billing Displacement: Despite prominent billing, Laurence Fishburne has less than 15 minutes of screentime. Danny Trejo has more screentime, and his character is the first one to be killed in the movie.
• Cast the Expert: A particularly cool example. Louis Ozawa Changchien has been practicing kendo since he was five, and did his own stunts for Hanzo's fight with the Falconer Predator, but the crew didn't know that when he was cast. He brought his kendo teacher (who he considers a second father) on to help choreograph the scene.
• Deleted Scene: More details here.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Adrien Brody packed on quite a bit of muscle to play Royce.
• Executive Veto: The original plan was to alter the 20th Century Fox logo, putting a heat vision filter (as seen from the Predators' viewpoint) over it halfway through the fanfare. The studio nixed that particular idea.
• Fake Nationality: Danny Trejo and Mahershala Ali match their characters' ethnicities, but are American, and the Israeli is Brazilian (Alice Braga).
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Oleg Taktarov dubbed his own voice in the Russian version.
• No Stunt Double: Topher Grace performed some of his own stunts, including jumping off a waterfall.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Adrien Brody, known for playing nice, physically nonthreatening guys, plays Royce, the ripped badass loner soldier. The casting helps characterize Royce as a thoughtful, intelligent guy on top of being a badass. The filmmakers also noted that they kept Brody lean because real-life soldiers usually have such a build, rather than the bulging beach muscles of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • Topher Grace in a hardcore action movie. And that's the least of it.
• Promoted Fanboy: Adrien Brody claimed he had been "blown away" by Predator and viewed his role as a challenge, wanting to bring a complexity to the character that would contrast with Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in the original film.
• Saved from Development Hell: The film's basic plot was conceived in 1994, when Robert Rodriguez was working on Desperado. He presented a draft of the script to 20th Century Fox, but they turned it down because the budget required was too large. Fifteen years later, the studio decided to follow through with his script; in the end, an updated version of his script.
• Stunt Casting: Used quite a bit, but subverted, in that it's not the actor's fame that makes their appearance noteworthy, but their previous body of work.
  • Noland steals the show in no small part due to Laurence Fishburne's acting chops, but add in the Apocalypse Now shout out, and it's a perfect storm of "interesting things in that scene to talk about with other movie buffs".
  • Topher Grace is cast so far against type that it's almost shocking to see his face in this movie.
  • Danny Trejo is so very with type it's almost a nudge-nudge-wink in-joke with the audience — especially Robert Rodriguez fans.
• Throw It In!: While filming a scene, Nikolai's actor Oleg Taktarov hit his face on a steadicam and began to bleed, but continued filming because the blood added to the effect of the scene.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Josh Brolin, Freddy Rodriguez, and Milo Ventimiglia were considered for Royce.
  • Jeff Fahey was briefly considered for the role of Noland.
  • Noland was originally supposed to be played by Danny Glover. However, even if it would have been the perfect way to tie the film to Predator 2 as well as 1, it is actually unclear whether Glover would've been playing Mike Harrigan or an entirely new character. (It is also unknown whether they would have turned a fan-favorite like Harrigan into a murderous madman like Noland in that case.)
  • In the DVD Commentary, they state that Isabella was originally planned to die saving Royce. Between her performance and the ending having Royce as "the king of death", they decided not to. It makes Royce's reaction to Isabella's injury from the Berserker more understandable.
  • Robert Rodriguez intended to have Arnold Schwarzenegger reappear as Dutch in the form of a cameo at the film's end — after defeating the Berserker, Royce and Isabelle sit bloodied and exhausted in the jungle when a Yautja ship lands nearby and a host of Predators emerge. Too tired to fight, the survivors await their fate, but the Predators do not attack. Instead they split into two single-file lines flanking the doorway, and through the gap in the center their leader emerges from the ship, his armor covered in trophies. The leader would then remove his helmet, revealing it to be Dutch, who tells Royce, "Not bad, kid...Not bad at all." The scene was dropped due to Schwarzenegger being unavailable, but Rodriguez has mentioned a desire to include the sequence in any potential Predators sequel.
  • Rodriguez' original script had the Predators riding motorbikes and drinking alien beer while watching matches in a Colosseum-like arena. There was a substantial role for Dutch, who had been captured and was forced to fight in the arena as a gladiator against Predators and other alien creatures. Due to prohibitive costs and Schwarzenegger's term as governor of California, it was re-written to feature captured soldiers dropped into an alien game reserve, but there would originally have been 200 Predators in the movie. Nimród Antal, a big fan of the franchise, found it preposterous, reasoning that if a single Predator posed a dangerous threat in the previous films, then dealing with hundreds of them would give the human characters no reasonable chance for survival. It was scaled back to three Predators, and another basic idea that was kept throughout included six out of the eight human characters getting killed.

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