The Predator film franchise is headed back to theaters with the release of Predator: Badlands. However, it’s just been revealed that Predator: Badlands will also be the first mainline entry to receive a PG-13 rating, which producer Ben Rosenblatt has stepped forward to justify.
Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg, who previously helmed the very R-rated entries Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, is no stranger to keeping gore and violence intact with the Predator movie franchise. Of course, Predator: Badlands is aiming to be a very different kind of Predator movie, and the aforementioned producer explained how this led to the PG-13 rating.
Predator: Badlands is very obviously taking place from the Predator’s POV. However, he’ll be joined by a humanlike android played by Elle Fanning, and it looks like that’s our clue for the film’s PG-13 rating. Because there are no humans, only androids and monsters, the film doesn’t need to have a R-rating to portray the gore and violence audiences expect.
Here’s what Rosenblatt shared on that front while speaking with Bloody-Disgusting during a recent set visit:
“We don’t have any humans in the movie, and so we don’t have any human red blood. We’re hoping that’s going to play to our advantage. Which is a way of answering your question, how hard are we going to go?
“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 colors other than red.“
He similarly shared these goals with IGN during their own set visit:
“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. 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.”
As such, fans can still expect a violent and brutal movie – just without the deaths of any human characters. Fortunately, because there are no human characters, there shouldn’t be anything lost in the process. Of course, we’ll have to see how fans feel when the movie fully hits theaters this November.
Predator: Badlands is scheduled to hit theaters on November 7, 2025. Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional updates regarding the Predator and Alien film franchises as we have them.