It has been confirmed by the folks over at IGN that the upcoming “Predator: Badlands” won’t be an R-rated, but a PG-13 installment, and the first time a theatrical solo installment has pursued a family-friendly rating. The outlet spoke with one of the film’s producers, Ben Rosenblatt, about the rating, and he confirmed that they don’t have humans in the off-world setting, so they were able to get away with a lighter rating than if they had a bunch of humans being torn or blown into pieces by alien weapons.
“We’ll see where it ends up, but our hope for it is that it can be a PG-13 that feels like an R,” Rosenblatt said during IGN’s set visit. “That’s kind of our hope. And really, what that’s about is just being able to broaden out the audience for a movie like this. We don’t have any humans in the movie, and so we don’t have any human red blood…So we’re hoping that’s gonna play to our advantage. We’re going to go as hard as we possibly can within those constraints, and we think we’ll be able to do some pretty awesomely gruesome stuff. But in colours other than red.”
Trailers promoting the film telegraphed that there isn’t any real “human violence” as the other characters showing up on the alien planet (seemingly being colonized by a group of androids) are other androids like Elle Fanning‘s Thia, a synthetic made by Weyland-Yutanti (the evil corporation from the “Alien” franchise and feature in the recent Hulu/Disney+ series “Alien: Earth“) it is also expected to feature a bunch of alien creatures highlighted in the latest footage.
Director Dan Trachtenberg‘s previous movie in the franchise, “Prey” (streamed on Hulu/Disney+), was rated R, so die-hard fans might be a tad confused with this choice, but the studio is likely attempting to squeeze as much money out of a wide-ranging global audience, not entirely surprising. Then again, without human gore, an R-rating might not make much sense (the “LOTR” and “Hobbit” films from Peter Jackson get away with a lot of violence because it’s a fantasy world).
2004’s crossover “Alien vs. Predator,” directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, was the last time the Yautja dabbled in the PG-13 arena on the big screen, which 20th Century Fox got an earful from fandom, and the studio ultimately pivoted back to an R-rating for the next Earthbound sequel “AVP: Requiem.”
“Predator: Badlands” arrives in theaters on November 7, going head-to-head with Edgar Wright‘s “The Running Man” remake (expected to keep the mature and violent nature of the original), and could further explain 20th Century’s targeting of a younger demographic.
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