Tomorrow, the hunt flips. Predator: Badlands storms into theaters on Friday, November 7, 2026, and for the first time in nearly forty years of the franchise, the dreadlocked alien with the plasma caster is not the monster in the shadows — he is the hero you are cheering for.

Director Dan Trachtenberg earned the keys to this franchise with Prey in 2022, a lean, brutal survival story that reminded everyone why the Predator works best when the hunt feels personal. He followed it with the animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers earlier this year, and now Badlands is his biggest swing yet — a full theatrical spectacle from 20th Century Studios, built for IMAX, Dolby Cinema, RealD 3D, 4DX, and every premium screen it can get its claws on.

The story centers on Dek, played by newcomer Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi — a young Yautja, outcast from his clan and dropped on a hostile alien planet to prove himself by hunting the ultimate adversary. Everything on the planet wants him dead, and the film's wildest gamble is asking the audience to feel that struggle from the Predator's side of the mask. Trachtenberg has compared Dek to Mad Max and Conan the Barbarian, and honestly? That energy tracks.

Dek does not hunt alone. He teams up with Thia, played by Elle Fanning — a damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic android whose loyalty and origins sit at the heart of the story. Yes, that Weyland-Yutani, which quietly ties the Predator universe a little closer to Alien territory. The final trailer, released this week, leans hard into their odd-couple dynamic: a ruthless hunter learning to trust, and a broken machine learning to fight.

Trachtenberg directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Patrick Aison, his Prey collaborator, with a score by Sarah Schachner and Benjamin Wallfisch. The film is rated PG-13 and runs 1 hour 47 minutes. There is no streaming date yet — this one is theaters only, and it is clearly designed to be seen big and loud.

Here is why we are hyped: the Predator franchise spent decades as a villain-of-the-week machine, and the moment a filmmaker dared to make the alien the protagonist, the whole formula cracked open. If Badlands lands, it rewrites what a Predator movie can be — and Trachtenberg has already said this is only the second of three Predator ideas he has planned.

So grab your tickets, pick the biggest screen near you, and get ready to root for the hunter. The hunt begins tomorrow.

Images in this post are original AI-generated artwork inspired by the film.

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