Oct 22, 2010 - Although Nimród Antal directed the science fiction thriller Predators, the initial idea for the remake/sequel of sorts spawned in the mind of filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. The "one man film crew" first created the idea for Predators all the way back in 1995 and through the years eventually blossomed from that first draft into the final product that's out on DVD and Blu-ray.
One of the most surprising things about Predators is how they were able to wrap up a big science fiction film like this with not only so little money but in a small amount of time.

Predators centers on a group of criminals who are dropped on an unknown planet, quickly realizing that they are the prey. From there on it's a struggle to survive the hunting planet and try to find their way back home.

We had the fine opportunity to talk to the Sin City and Machete director, talking to him about many things that include the initial choosing of Antal, how Predators" fit within the whole universe of this franchise, all the way down to the possibility of another sequel.

Interview with Predators Producer Robert Rodriguez

This is basically your baby. Why didn’t you direct it yourself? Why did you get Nimrod Antal to direct it and will he be coming back for the sequel???
Robert Rodriguez: "Well, it was interesting. It was the only script I’d ever written that I wasn’t writing for me to direct myself. I didn’t really like the experience because I thought, 'Well that’s kind of an easy gig, you go write something, you hand it over, you don’t actually have to make the movie, and you get paid.' Then it’s never like that because you invest a lot of yourself in a script, you have to work on it, you have to come up with these ideas that you end up liking, and then it goes away and it might get made, it might not get made.

It might get made crappy, it might get made really good, but it’s someone else’s idea and you’re not a part of it. So it feels like you give birth to a baby and then they take the baby away from you and hand him off to somebody else. So I never did it again. I decided I’m only going to write stuff that I’m going to direct, and it’s hard to write a script and write something that you know you’re not going to get to finally direct. It’s really hard, when you’re a writer/director, and I never did it again.??"

"So when they brought the script back I was kind of happy to see them come back saying, 'We dug up your old script 15 years later and we really like it. Hey, it was really good, why didn’t we make this?' 'Well, because Arnold didn’t want to do it.' 'Oh, that’s right. Well can you direct it now? We want to bring the franchise back.'"

"And I said, 'When do you need it?' And they said they needed it for this summer, which was last summer, so I said, 'I can’t - I’m doing Machete. I can’t direct it.' And they suggested producing it, so I said let’s try it. I’ve never produced something that I didn’t direct, especially something that I wrote."

"And Nimrod had a great take on it. He wanted just to go really dark and make it just about the chase. He wanted to cut out a lot of stuff and make it just about the chase and the hunt. So that’s pretty streamlined; we can do that for the budget they’re giving us. They gave us less than the last Predator, which was the cheapest of all of them. We felt we needed to do much more with the money, which is why they wanted me to do it here without any interference from them. They said, 'You just do it. Do your Troublemaker magic and make it seem like a bigger movie than it is!'"

"I wanted to see Predators walking around the studio. That was the coolest thing, was to walk out of my office and see these Predators running around because when I was working on Machete I didn’t get to see anything like that. Sometimes I’d walk outside and see them [the Predators] jumping off of scaffolding into a green pit outside and the sun setting real nice as the actor’s walking around in costume...Predators walking around with a cigarette. All great fun. It’s like your dream of having a studio with several movies going on, and there are several shots in Machete where we couldn’t frame out the sets, so I said, 'Oh, just leave those big Predator trees out behind him. No one’s going to notice. No one’s going to know that that’s Predators. We’ll point it out on the DVD.'"

When you’re dealing with a franchise like Predators, how do you stay true to the franchise but put your own stamp on it?

Robert Rodriguez: "??That was one thing: Should we consider all the movies? But then should we consider all the comics because there’s a lot of terrific stuff in those as well? Then I decided that back in the day there weren’t any comics when I first got this assignment, so I decided to just keep it clean. With the time we had, let’s just do what I originally set out to do and just do the movie as if it was '95. 'Let’s just make it a story that only has as its reference the first Predator movie.' It frees us from having to come up with anything and it also keeps us from figuring out what’s contradictory."

"I don’t even know what stuff might have been contradicting the other movies because I didn’t watch them that closely, because we knew we were going to have to be not tied to them. The big fan favorites, we knew weren’t as big and as loved as the first one because the first one was the one people still said they loved the most. That’s the one that we stuck with. I think if it’s a different type of series where you had a great love for all the movies, well then you’d have to consider all of them."

Can you give us any hints about something for the sequel?

Robert Rodriguez: "We have some ideas of where we can go. I probably want to include some of these ideas, a more expanded universe. If we stayed on that planet, it might be for a little while. There’s a lot to explore, which is nice about them not making it their home planet. You can go so many places, you can do a lot of things. There’s several ideas, directions we can go, depending on how much they’re willing to put into it."

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Predators was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 19, 2010 and contains commentary by Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and deleted/extended scenes.