‘Predator’ Movie Casting Arnold Schwarzenegger Unlikely, Says Boyd Holbrook
The upcoming Predator movie cast isn’t likely to include the original star. Arnold Schwarzenegger might not return to play Dutch, the musclebound hero of the first film, according to star Boyd Holbrook.
There is a lot of rumor circulating around the upcoming Predator film, from its cast to its status as a story. While director Shane Black, whose previous efforts have included Lethal Weapon and Iron Man 3, has come forward to clearly state that it will be a sequel to the first two films, others have said the opposite. At least two sources have called it a reboot.
Either way, it seems that Robert Rodriguez’s take on Predators didn’t do as well as expected, despite hailing from a similar titling tactic as Aliens. It may have had to do with such a radical change of cast, replacing WWF veteran Jesse “The Body” Ventura, Carl Weathers, and Arnold with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace. Rodriguez also comes from a long line of films based in Mexico or featuring Latino actors, having moved on from the reboot to launch Danny Trejo into the action genre in Machete.
The original featured a classic 80s action storyline about a group of muscle-bound men dropping into an unknown jungle and finding themselves hunted by an alien with superior technology. Said alien almost ended up with another upcoming action star Jean-Claude Van-Damme in the titular role, but when “the muscles from Brussels” saw the green-screen suit, he backed out. He had mistaken it for the final alien form.
The return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to his original role in the new Predator movie cast could have been a welcome return, though he obviously looks a little too old to pull off the role again. Most likely, he would make a cameo to “pass the torch” to his latest successor.
Technically, Danny Glover would be the one to do that, as the sequel had him actually taking one on in a one-on-one brawl, earning the aliens’ respect. Arnold had taken a chopper away from a nuclear explosion, essentially making Glover the bigger man.
Star Boyd Holbrook (Gone Girl, Run All Night) has denied that Arnold will be back.
“I’m currently working on Predator, it’s not a sequel. Shane Black has made something totally new, somehow keeping within the realm of Predator [while also being] absolutely new in terms of the story that we’re talking about today, and rooted in something real. It’s real fresh. I don’t think you’re going to see [Arnold] Schwarzenegger. It would kind of make it a gimmick. It’s horror, science-fiction and a western.”
As Coming Soon has stated about Holbrook’s wording, the upcoming film being a western could be a very new direction. Westerns and horror don’t often go together, as Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider has proven. Of course, for that film, it may have been the dialogue that turned the titular character from a threatening superhero into a cheesy cartoon character. The sequel didn’t help, with most action scenes involving him just standing there staring down the bad guys.
Producer John Davis has also mentioned how the upcoming film is not a sequel, though technically it’s up to the director how a movie turns out. He’d said the writing and perspective are so fresh that it’s the “most entertaining way to reinvent a franchise.”
Shane has done this before, as Iron Man 3 was one of the most polarizing films in the MCU to date, pulling the infamous Mandarin twist, which made fans either love it or hate it.
A lot is still unknown about the upcoming Predator movie and its cast. It’s also probably just as well that Arnold might not be back for this one.
[Featured Image by 20th Century Fox]
