58 Fun Facts About Predator

In which year was the original Predator released?

Predator opened at number one in the US in June 1987 with $12 million and finished the year twelfth at the domestic box office.

Who directed the original Predator?

John McTiernan's Predator was his first studio film after the independent Nomads; he made Die Hard the following year.

What is the surname of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, Major Alan "Dutch"?

Major Alan 'Dutch' Schaefer returned as a playable character in Capcom's 1994 Alien vs. Predator arcade game and in Predator: Hunting Grounds (2020), where Schwarzenegger voiced him.

What was the script's working title before it became Predator?

The script was titled Hunter; its first concept involved several species of alien hunters chasing various targets before it was streamlined to one creature and one soldier.

Which sibling screenwriting duo wrote Predator?

Jim and John Thomas, then unknowns, resorted to slipping the script under the door of a Fox producer; they later wrote Predator 2 as well.

Which martial-arts star was originally cast as the Predator before being replaced?

Jean-Claude Van Damme, at 5 feet 9, looked too small next to the bodybuilder cast, and reportedly kept complaining that the suit was too hot.

Which 7-foot-2 actor ultimately played the Predator?

Kevin Peter Hall could not see out of the mask and had to rehearse with it off, memorising where everything was; he also played the Predator in Predator 2.

Which effects artist created the final Predator creature after the original design was scrapped?

He had worked with Schwarzenegger on The Terminator, and his creature earned the film its only Oscar nomination.

Which director, sitting beside the effects artist on a plane, suggested giving the Predator mandibles?

James Cameron said he had always wanted to see a creature with mandibles, and they became the Predator's signature look.

Who composed Predator's score, his first major action movie?

Alan Silvestri was hired off the back of Back to the Future and returned to score Predator 2 in 1990.

Which Little Richard song plays in the helicopter as the team flies into the jungle?

'Long Tall Sally' plays in the helicopter, and Mac later recites its lyrics while chasing the creature through the trees.

Who plays CIA agent Al Dillon, Dutch's old Vietnam ally, in Predator?

Carl Weathers was the producers' first choice thanks to his turn as boxer Apollo Creed in the Rocky films, and he secretly trained at 3 a.m. so his physique looked effortless.

What name did the internet give the arm-clasping greeting between Dutch and Dillon?

The 'Epic Handshake' became an object-labelling meme, with the two clasped arms standing for parties agreeing on something.

Jesse Ventura plays which heavy gunner on Dutch's team?

Ventura plays Blain Cooper, who lugs the minigun 'Ol' Painless'. The wrestler and Navy UDT veteran co-starred with Schwarzenegger again the same year in The Running Man.

Ventura later served as governor of which state, from 1999 to 2003?

Ventura governed Minnesota from 1999 to 2003; Schwarzenegger became governor of California later in 2003, making Predator the rare film with two future governors in its cast.

Which cast member ran unsuccessfully for governor of Kentucky in 2003?

Sonny Landham, who played the team's tracker, mounted a Republican bid for Kentucky governor in 2003 that went nowhere; his co-stars Ventura and Schwarzenegger both actually won governorships.

Which member of the cast went on to direct the 2018 sequel The Predator?

Shane Black plays the bespectacled radio operator in the original and directed and co-wrote the 2018 film with Fred Dekker.

Which team member is the first to be killed by the Predator?

Hawkins is the first to die, killed after catching the fleeing prisoner, who is spared; Blain falls next.

Bill Duke plays which sergeant, who provokes the team into blindly firing into the jungle?

Bill Duke plays Sergeant Mac Eliot, whose grief after Blain's death sets off the wild volley into the trees; Duke later directed films including A Rage in Harlem.

Which character, the team's expert tracker, is the first to sense something inhuman in the jungle?

Billy, the team's tracker, is the first to sense the hunter; he later stays behind on a log bridge to face the creature alone with only a knife.

What is the name of the guerrilla prisoner played by Elpidia Carrillo?

Anna, played by Elpidia Carrillo, recounts local folktales of a demon that kills men and takes trophies in the hottest years.

Why does the Predator spare the guerrilla prisoner?

The Predator only attacks those it considers a threat, meaning the armed; Dutch realises this and tells the prisoner to drop her weapon and run for the extraction point.

What does Dutch cover himself in to hide from the Predator's thermal vision?

Dutch smears himself in cool mud, which masks his body heat; Schwarzenegger spent about three weeks caked in it for the climactic fight.

The film is set in which region?

The story is set in a Central American jungle; the writers chose the region because US special forces were active there throughout the 1980s.

Most of Predator was actually filmed near which Mexican resort city?

Most of the shoot took place in the jungle at Mismaloya near Puerto Vallarta, after filming began at Palenque, Chiapas; much of the cast and crew suffered from bad water at their hotel.

Roughly how much did Predator gross worldwide on its original release?

Predator grossed about $98 million worldwide, roughly $60 million of it in the US and Canada, on a budget of around $15 million.

Predator received a single Academy Award nomination, in which category?

Predator's sole nomination was for Best Visual Effects, which went to Innerspace; the Academy had debated whether the creature counted as makeup or an effect.

What colour suit did a stand-in wear to create the Predator's cloaking effect?

A stand-in wore a bright red suit, chosen as the furthest from jungle green and sky blue, which was removed with chroma key and filled with a wider-lens plate.

The Predator's glowing green blood was made from glow-stick liquid mixed with what?

The luminous blood was glow-stick fluid mixed with K-Y personal lubricant; the suit's electrical spark effects were rotoscoped by hand on light tables.

Which earlier Schwarzenegger movie convinced Joel Silver to make Predator big-budget?

Commando (1985) was Silver's hit with Schwarzenegger; Bill Duke came over from that film too, and Silver brought in his old boss Lawrence Gordon as co-producer.

Who plays General Phillips, the officer who briefs Dutch's team on the mission?

R.G. Armstrong, a veteran of Sam Peckinpah westerns such as Ride the High Country, plays Major General Phillips, who sends Dutch's team after the downed helicopter.

Production paused in April 1986 so Schwarzenegger could fly east to marry whom?

Schwarzenegger married Maria Shriver on April 26, 1986 and honeymooned for only three days while the second unit kept shooting.

How much weight did both the director and Schwarzenegger reportedly lose during the shoot?

Both reportedly shed 25 pounds: the star deliberately, to look leaner for the role, and the director by avoiding the local food over health worries.

Who provided the voice of the Predator?

The physical performance and the voice came from two different men.

Predator 2 (1990) moved the hunt from the jungle to which city?

Los Angeles, ten years after the first film, where a disgruntled police detective battles the alien amid a gang war between Colombian and Jamaican cartels.

Who stars as the police lieutenant hunting the creature in Predator 2?

Danny Glover plays Lieutenant Mike Harrigan; Schwarzenegger declined to return, so the sequel needed a new hero.

Which famous Easter egg appears among the trophy skulls aboard the Predator ship in Predator 2?

Fox owned both franchises and the same effects shop worked on both, and the gag eventually spawned two crossover films.

Who leads the group of abducted killers in Predators (2010)?

Adrien Brody, Best Actor winner for The Pianist, plays the mercenary Royce; the plural title was a deliberate nod to Aliens.

Which filmmaker wrote a third Predator script as early as 1994 and eventually produced Predators?

Robert Rodriguez wrote his Predators script in 1994, but Fox did not greenlight the project until 2009, with Nimrod Antal directing and Rodriguez producing.

The 2022 prequel Prey is set in which year?

Prey is set in 1719 on the Northern Great Plains, nearly three centuries before Dutch's mission.

Prey's heroine Naru belongs to which nation?

Naru is Comanche, and Prey was the first feature released with a full Comanche-language dub, performed by the original cast.

Who directed Prey and then Predator: Badlands?

Dan Trachtenberg directed Prey (2022) and Predator: Badlands (2025); he had pitched the Prey concept with writer Patrick Aison as far back as 2016.

Prey skipped cinemas in the US and premiered on which streaming service?

Prey went straight to Hulu on August 5, 2022, and to Disney+ outside the US, after a premiere at San Diego Comic-Con that July.

Which actress plays the android Thia in Predator: Badlands (2025)?

Elle Fanning plays the damaged synthetic Thia, carried through much of the film as a torso, as well as her twin Tessa; for the first time the franchise made a Predator, the exiled runt Dek, its protagonist.

Thia, the android in Predator: Badlands, was built by which corporation from the Alien films?

Thia is a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, the company from Alien, another thread tying the two franchises together after the crossover films.

By what name is the Predator species known in comics, novels and later films?

Expanded-universe media also used names such as Hish-Qu-Ten and Skin Thieves before Yautja stuck.

In Killer of Killers (2025), the pilot Torres fights a Predator during which war?

Killer of Killers tells three stories: a Viking raider in the ninth century, a ninja in Edo-period Japan, and Torres, an American pilot who downs a Predator craft in 1942, during World War II.

Which line from Predator became permanently attached to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who later reused it in ads and TV?

'Get to the chopper' was revived on The New Celebrity Apprentice and in commercials for the game Mobile Strike.

The original, rejected Predator design by Boss Film Studios had which feature?

It was ungainly and too slow for the jungle, prompting the call for a redesign.

Which video game featured the Predator as a playable outfit and hidden enemy in 2021?

Fortnite added the Predator in January 2021 as a hidden boss on the island and as an unlockable outfit; beating it dropped its cloaking device.

Which composer did Joel Silver first want for the score, before he proved unavailable?

He had just worked with Silver on Lethal Weapon but was busy on Adventures in Babysitting.

Which company released a side-scrolling Predator video game the year the film came out?

Dutch later returned as a playable character in Predator: Hunting Grounds, with Schwarzenegger voicing him.

In Predator 2, the elder Predator hands Harrigan what antique weapon as a trophy?

The elder gives Harrigan a flintlock pistol engraved 'Raphael Adolini 1715', hinting that the hunters have visited Earth for centuries.

Who plays Peter Keyes, the federal agent trying to capture the creature in Predator 2?

Gary Busey plays Peter Keyes, whose team tries to trap the Predator in a refrigerated meat-packing plant wearing heat-masking suits, and is wiped out.

Alien vs. Predator (2004) is set on Bouvetøya, an island roughly 1,000 miles north of where?

Bouvetøya lies about 1,000 miles north of Antarctica; Lance Henriksen plays billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland, drawn there by a buried pyramid giving off a 'heat bloom'.

Which publisher announced in July 2020 that it had acquired the Predator comic-book rights?

Marvel announced in July 2020 that it had taken the Alien and Predator licences from Dark Horse, which had published Predator comics since 1989, including Fire and Stone and Life and Death.

Which prequel short for Predators aired as a TV and cinema advertisement before the film's release?

The Chosen, a prequel short, ran as a TV and cinema spot; the 2010 home-video release also included the shorts Moments of Extraction and Crucified.

Where did Entertainment Weekly rank Predator on its 2007 list of the greatest action movies of all time?

Film.com's C. Robert Cargill called it the seventh-best film of 1987, 'often imitated, but never properly duplicated'.