The first tribal pipe ceremony that filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg participated in took him by surprise.
It was deeply emotional.
And while Trachtenberg and his screenwriter Patrick Aison did not come from Native backgrounds, producer Jhane Myers does.
As a woman of Comanche descent, she seesPreyas a unique and golden opportunity.
So its pretty amazing to bring people to see just that.
You see what that life is like and what the Comanche world is.
Additionally, there are a handful of scenes filmed in actual Comanche.
So I recommend that you watch it two times.
Watch it once in Comanche and once in English.
To achieve that effect onscreen was a learning process for many involved, including the stars.
For instance, Midthunder is descended from Lakota, Dakota, and Nakoda people.
Ive been very intentional in the past few times Ive chosen Indigenous-specific roles, Midthunder tells us.
Ive never done a period piece.
So to get to go to work everyday there [was exciting].
It also added to the films visceral return to nature in the Predator mythos.
Compared to so many other modern blockbusters and streaming extensions of IP, this feels transgressive.
It was also a thrill to make.
I enjoyed the crap out of it, Beavers says.
Trachtenberg cites Terrence Malick as a reference for the look of the film.
Of course Malick never had an alien monster wreak havoc in his period dramas.
Hence a slightly different take on the Predator.
There were a lot of keywords: feral, primal, that he gave to me.
We worked together to create this more animalistic, a little bit less human creature.
For the director it was about returning a ferocity to the Predators presence onscreen.
I wanted this to feel much more alien.
Preydebuts on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ in the UK on Aug. 5.
