Predator: Badlands — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Plot

Dek is a Yautja runt from the Yautja home planet of Yautja Prime. Seeking approval from his father, clan leader Njohrr, Dek plans to hunt the Kalisk, an apex predator on the "death planet" Genna, feared even by Njohrr. Before Dek can leave, Njohrr arrives and orders Dek's brother Kwei to kill him, deeming him too weak for the clan. Defying the order, Kwei activates his ship to transport Dek to Genna, fighting Njohrr only to be defeated and lose an arm; Dek watches helplessly as Njohrr executes Kwei.

Upon crash-landing, Dek faces numerous dangers from Genna's flora and fauna, losing almost all of his gear. He reluctantly allies with Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani Corporation android, whose team was destroyed by the Kalisk. Thia offers to help Dek track the Kalisk. Later, they are joined by a friendly creature that Thia names Bud, who marks Dek with her saliva while they are camping out of gratitude to Dek for saving her from a wild beast and feeding her. Dek later reveals to Thia that his father killed Kwei, prompting Thia to teach him about the wolves on Earth, and that the "alpha" wolf protects the pack, but Dek misunderstands her words and believes he will be the alpha who kills the most. Meanwhile, Thia's "sister", Tessa, is retrieved by Weyland-Yutani androids and repaired at their main base, where she is threatened with decommissioning if she fails her mission, and is told of Dek's presence on Genna and that Thia is with him. Joined by a Weyland-Yutani team, Tessa begins searching for Dek's group, stumbling across his crashed ship and finding his lost equipment—including cryogenic explosives.

After discovering the remains of her team, Thia attempts to repair herself, revealing that the Weyland-Yutani team is on the way as they aim to capture the Kalisk, and urges Dek to flee, saying he cannot kill the Kalisk. Feeling betrayed, Dek challenges the Kalisk alone with only his sword. The two fight, and though Dek manages to sever its head and tail, the Kalisk regenerates itself and subdues him. Unexpectedly, it spares him after smelling him, but the Weyland-Yutani team arrives, and Tessa captures them both after freezing them with the cryogenic explosives.

Tessa congratulates Thia on her successful mission because the Kalisk's regenerative powers could be a miracle for humanity, then begins experimenting on Dek, but Thia intervenes and convinces her that Dek is not ideal. Seeing Thia's emotions as weakness, Tessa slates her for deactivation and orders her boxed up. Regretting selling Dek and the Kalisk out to the Company, Thia helps Dek escape, and Dek comes across Kwei's crashed ship; after healing his wounds and venting out his anger at the death of his brother, he realizes the truth of Thia's words – that an alpha wolf does not kill the most prey, but rather protects its pack members – and uses Genna's natural environment to create improvised weapons, such as explosives and blades, to rescue Thia. While doing so, he reunites with Bud and realizes she is the child of the Kalisk, who had smelled her saliva on him, and decides to rescue the Kalisk as well.

Dek and Bud infiltrate the Weyland-Yutani base, kill most of the guards, and free Thia, who reunites with her severed legs as Dek reveals to her that Bud is the Kalisk's child. While Thia and Bud search for the Kalisk, Dek kills the remaining guards before being confronted by Tessa, who pilots a power loader mech and wields Kwei's plasmacaster. The Kalisk, freed by Thia, joins the fight and eventually swallows Tessa alive. After Dek and Bud each share a moment with the Kalisk, Tessa kills the creature with a combination of cryogenic grenades and plasmacaster blasts fired from inside its body, then prepares to kill Thia for her betrayal. As Thia severs ties with her "sister", Dek stabs Tessa to death and reclaims his brother's plasmacaster, while Bud tears off Tessa's head and spine.

Sometime later, Dek returns to Yautja Prime. He presents Tessa's skull to his father as a trophy and demands his own cloaking device as a reward, but Njohrr denies the request and orders his bodyguards to kill Dek. Quickly dispatching the bodyguards, Dek challenges and defeats his father in a duel, cutting off his arm and restraining him with his own trap. Njohrr attempts to barter for his life by offering Dek a place in the clan, claiming he was wrong about him. Dek rejects the offer, having found his own clan with Thia and Bud. An older and larger Bud bites Njohrr's head off, and Dek takes the cloaking device for himself, which a fully repaired Thia congratulates him for. Njohrr's remaining clan members suddenly pull out their weapons just as a large Yautja ship appears from the horizon. As Thia wonders if the ship is friendly, Dek grabs his sword and reveals that it is his mother.

Production

In February 2024, it was revealed that a standalone film in the Predator franchise titled Badlands was in development, set to be directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who previously directed and co-wrote the story of Prey (2022) and Predator: Killer of Killers (2025), and co-written by Patrick Aison, who wrote Prey. Writers Brian Duffield, Bryan Fuller, Patrick Somerville, and Ben Schwartz are credited for "additional literary material (not on-screen)." The director cited stylistic and thematic influences from the works of Frank Frazetta and Terrence Malick, Conan the Barbarian, Drax the Destroyer, the films Shane (1953), Mad Max 2 (1981), The Book of Eli (2010), as well as Clint Eastwood Westerns, and the video game Shadow of the Colossus (2005). In June, Elle Fanning was in talks to join the film in a dual role, with her casting confirmed in August.

Drawing influence from the franchise's expanded universe, Badlands is intended to be a self-contained entry in the series, set on the Predators' home-world and focusing on the culture of their species. To this end, a consistent written and verbal language for the Predators was developed for the film by linguist Britton Watkins. In creating the Predator language, Watkins drew influence from previous depictions of the Predators language, but redesigned the language to have consistent rules of grammar: the Predators numerical system was influenced by the self destruct timer in the original 1987 Predator film, the written language from symbols seen in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), and their spoken language from a brief depiction in The Predator (2018). Consideration was also made for the type of sound a Predator's mouth design could realistically make, as well as the Predators typical clicking noises.

The film adds the terms "Yautja" and "Yautja Prime" to the Predator film series to refer to the Predator species and their homeworld, respectively. These terms were introduced in the franchise's expanded universe, first appearing in the 1994 novel Aliens vs. Predator: Prey authored by S.D. Perry and Steve Perry, which itself was a spinoff of the Aliens vs. Predator comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics. In a departure from previous films, the Predator, Dek, is the protagonist rather than an antagonist. Dek is portrayed by stuntman Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who also learned the Predator language specifically for the role. To create Dek's physical appearance, Studio Gillis designed a creature suit to portray Dek's body, while Dek's face was digitally enhanced using motion capture computer animation to convey more subtle emotional expression. Wētā Workshop also contributed to the film's practical effects and designs. The fictional Weyland-Yutani Corporation featured in the Alien franchise (and created by screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett for the 1979 film Alien) appears in the film.

Principal photography began in New Zealand by August 27, 2024, under the working title Backpack, and wrapped in late October. Jeff Cutter served as the cinematographer, after previously working with Trachtenberg on Prey. Olivier Dumont and Kathy Siegel served as the film's production visual effects supervisor and visual effects producer, respectively, creating the film's computer-generated imagery through visual effects vendors Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Wētā FX, Rising Sun Pictures, Trixter, Important Looking Pirates, The Yard VFX, and Framestore. According to Trachtenberg, every shot of the film required visual effects work.

Home media

Predator: Badlands was released on digital platforms on January 6, 2026, and was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on February 17, 2026.

In the United States, Predator: Badlands topped Fandango at Home's weekly digital sales and rental chart for the week ending January 11, following its premium digital release on January 6. The film remained in first place for the weeks ending January 18 and January 25. It subsequently remained within the top ten from the week ending February 1 through March 1. On physical media, the film debuted at No. 1 on Circana's VideoScan chart, which tracks combined sales of all disc formats, as well as on the dedicated Blu-ray sales chart, for the week ending February 21. It was also the top-selling title on the 4K Ultra HD disc format during the same week. For February 2026, the film placed No. 1 on the monthly physical media sales chart and No. 2 on the year-to-date chart through February.

Streaming analytics firm FlixPatrol, which monitors daily updated VOD charts and streaming ratings across the globe, reported that Predator: Badlands ranked No. 1 on the U.S. Apple TV chart for the week ending January 11. As of January 13, the film placed first on multiple on-demand platforms, including Amazon, Apple TV, and Vudu, and also held the top position in several international markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. On Hulu, the film recorded 9 million views during its first five days of streaming, becoming the platform's most-watched film premiere since Prey (2022). Nielsen Media Research, which records streaming viewership on certain U.S. television screens, announced that Predator: Badlands accumulated 587 million minutes of viewing time between February 9–15, ranking as the third most-streamed film during that period. The following week, between February 16–22, the film recorded 343 million minutes of viewing time, again placing third. Between February 23 and March 1, Predator: Badlands garnered 165 million minutes of viewing time, ranking ninth.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 277 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "Director Dan Trachtenberg continues to take the Predator franchise in exciting new directions with Badlands, a rollicking adventure that transforms one of cinema's most iconic brutes into a hero worth rooting for." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A− on an A+ to F scale, the highest in the Predator franchise to date, and it received a 78% "definite recommend" on PostTrak.

Liz Shannon Miller of Consequence gave the film an "A−," stating that "Badlands flips the approach and finds something fresh and wonderful and bold as a result — as if James Cameron had made Terminator 2 entirely from the T-800's point of view." Tim Robey of The Telegraph gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, praising Badlands' ability to "humanise a film in which not a single human features." Not all reviews were positive however, with Hindustan Times reviewer Abhimanyu Mathur referring to the movie as a "bland" spin-off that "nobody asked for." Whilst supportive of the choice to focus on the runt of a litter, Mathur described Dek as a "whiny teenager," rather than as an "underdog," awarding Badlands 2 stars. Luca Fontana of Galaxus and Manohla Dargis of The New York Times also acknowledged Dek's reversed role as the prey, with the Kalisk instead becoming the underdog. Écran Large writer Geoffrey Crété described Badlands as a big leap from Trachtenberg's previous work in the franchise, describing the planet Genna as a "savage world," that is complemented by "high-quality visual effects." Crété criticized the characterization however, describing them as remaining "the same puppets serving the same eternal stories of identity quest and blended families." Giving the film 2 stars out of 5, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian similarly criticized the characterization of Dek, putting his humanization down to "the service of narrative development," concluding that "it ceases to be the Predator."

Elle Fanning was described as a "sprightly breath of fresh air, winsomely cutting through the grit-and-honor stolidity of the Predator mindset" by Richard Lawson of The Hollywood Reporter, going on to say that her character "steers the film away from impossible bleakness." Dustin Rowles, reviewing for Pajiba, also praised Fanning's performance, referring to her as "the glue holding it all together," remarking on her performance as humorous, intelligent and including "jaw-dropping action scenes involving her detached legs." Matthew Turner of Nerdly gave special mention to Badlands screenwriter Patrick Aison for making Dek sympathetic to the audience before Thia's first appearance.

Meredith Loftus of Offscreen Central gave Badlands a B+ rating, stating that "the only aspect that will get any attention this awards season is the visual effects." ScreenCrush writer Matt Singer commended the design of Dek, remarking that "it looks so convincing that the viewer simply accepts it as a living, flesh-and-blood creature." David Crow, reviewing for Den of Geek, credited the performance of Schuster-Koloamatangi for being able to act despite heavy CGI and prosthetics, remarking that Dek "looks unconvincingly alien, but there is a more human tactile performance in those eyes," making a comparison to prior Predator franchise entries. IGN writer Clint Gage scored Badlands 8 out of 10, complimenting the creature design, comparing them to those seen in Avatar and describing Genna as an "alien death planet populated with ravenous flora and fauna." Variety writer Peter Debruge compared the plot of Badlands to a live-action version of the poem "Jabberwocky" by author Lewis Carroll, naming Badlands the strongest entry in the Predator franchise since the original. Alan Ng writing for Film Threat enjoyed the action sequences but criticized the story "for lacking deeper meaning."

Predator: Badlands

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