“What if a Predator was Arnold this time?” That’s the wild pitch Dan Trachtenberg threw out during a Reddit AMA about his new animated Predator anthology film, Predator: Killer of Killers. And honestly? It might be the freshest thing to happen to the franchise since Arnold told an alien to “stick around”.
Set to drop on June 6th, 2025, on both Hulu and Disney+, Predator: Killer of Killers is the hyper-violent, blood-soaked animated follow-up to 2022’s Prey. While Prey dragged the franchise out of its creative coma and threw it back into the jungle of relevancy, Killer of Killers takes a completely different turn, and it’s not pulling any punches. Trachtenberg, who reignited the franchise with Prey, returns to co-direct this R-rated animated bloodbath alongside Josh Wassung from The Third Floor. And this time, they’re not following a human trying to survive a Predator… they’re letting the Predator lead the charge.
This anthology-style film is split into three time-jumping segments. It feels a bit like Love, Death & Robots meets Kill Bill in a way. Here’s the breakdown:
Episode One: A Viking warrior and her young son seek vengeance across a frostbitten battlefield.
Episode Two: A ninja challenges his own samurai brother in feudal Japan, and yes, there’s katana-slicing mayhem.
Episode Three: A WWII pilot faces off with a cloaked alien hunter that could turn the tide of the entire war.
Each tale has its own unique flavour, and all of it is tied together by one consistent element: a Predator.
In his Reddit Q&A, a fan asked about the jump from Prey’s grounded historical tone to this futuristic, alien-centered bloodfest. Dan’s response was brilliantly unhinged:
“Many sci-fi films feature creatures and alien races as the sidekicks or villains to the human characters, while often times those creatures are the most interesting! I just thought how cool it would be to see a movie where the creature was the MAIN character… What if a Predator was Arnold this time? What if he’s the David on a planet filled with Goliaths?”
In other words, Predator: Killer of Killers flips the script. It puts the hunter in the hero seat and lets the audience see the carnage from his thermal-tracking POV.
The official trailer is a savage montage of sliced limbs, flaming ruins, and Predators at peak lethality. There’s a shot of a samurai beheaded in one clean swoop. A warplane is being shadowed by a Predator ship. A Viking mother howling into the frozen winds, drenched in blood. This is not a Saturday morning cartoon. This is full-on, R-rated animated carnage, and fans are eating it up already.
It’s hard to overstate the shadow cast by the original Predator from 1987, the John McTiernan-directed, Arnold-starring action classic that saw a team of walking muscle cramps get picked off one-by-one in the jungle. Back then, we didn’t know what we were in for. An invisible alien with thermal vision and a trophy-hunting kink? Backed by a score that slapped and dialogue that somehow made “Get to the choppaaaaa!” eternal?
The original Predator worked because it was raw, testosterone-fueled nonsense, a slasher film disguised as a war movie. And while modern critics might roll their eyes at its one-liners and plot holes, there’s no denying its place in sci-fi/action royalty. It made nearly $100 million on a $15 million budget and launched a franchise that’s survived for nearly 40 years.
But not every Predator entry has been a winner. So why is Killer of Killers getting fans hyped again?
Because it knows exactly what it is. It leans into the brutal mythology. It experiments with format. It goes animated when no one expected it to. And, maybe most importantly, it remembers that the Predator is supposed to be a terrifying, nearly unstoppable force of nature.
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Predator: Killer of Killers is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
