Scifi Scoop Editors
Director Nimrod Antal’s Predators is gearing up. KNB Effects Group, whose effects include work on Transformers, The Chronicles of Narnia, Sin City, and the new Surrogates movie, are working on the design of the new look Predator(s) and the good news is they’re going back to the original Stan Winston design from the first Predator movie.
“I just saw some photos today and they look absolutely fantastic!”, says KNB executive Howard Berger who, back in the ’80s, got his start working with Stan Winston on Predator and Aliens.
‘’We wanted to have the Predator look as it did in the original film. We went back and looked at the original. I actually worked in the shop with Stan Winston on the first film. It was great to be able to go back to the series having not been involved in any of the sequels, and it was also great to be able to make sure we built them as Stan Winston did.’’
Berger is currently in Australia supervising the effects work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Back in Los Angeles Greg Nicotero is in charge of putting the Predator look together.
‘’Greg is supervising and masterminding that one. So we’re in pre-production on [it] right now. We’re doing all the creatures and make-up effects stuff for it. They look really fantastic. There’s a whole bunch of cool [Predator’s] in the film, and everyone’s going to be very happy that we’ve been very faithful to the Stan Winston designs. It’s out next year. It’s shooting very soon.’’
This version of the Predator franchise will follow a similar path to James Cameron’s Aliens, where a group of humans will find themselves stranded and struggling to survive on a planet home to Predators.
The script is in the hands of writer Alex Litvak, a relatively unknown writer who has been charged with the task of reworking an original story written some fifteen years ago by Rodriguez himself that was deemed too epic to produce at that time.
Predators will be released on July 7, 2010.
