The Predator Reshoots Explained

Cast member Keegan-Michael Key says reshoots have just been completed on Shane Black’s Predator sequel.

Things have been rather quiet lately in the world of The Predator, the third direct sequel to the 1987 classic and the first written and directed by Shane Black (Iron Man 3). The film was initially set to open this past February before being bumped to August and then September, and interest picked up last month when reports surfaced that reshoots were underway.

But now cast member Keegan-Michael Key, who is doing press for his role as Murray the Mummy in Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, has shed a little light on the status of The Predator. When asked about the reshoots for the latter movie, Key told Den of Geek and other assembled outlets at the Sony Animation lot, “We just finished last week, and just about three-quarters of the third act was rewritten.”

That’s a fairly substantial amount of work, and could indicate that the third act’s issues were problematic enough that they might have justified the film’s release date moving twice as well. With not a single frame of footage available to the public yet (more on that below), it’s hard to gauge what Black and co-writer Fred Dekker have been going for, but it’s evident that they needed more time to nail it.

Reshoots have become more of a hot topic recently among film fans, with seemingly every large-scale movie out there undergoing them to some extent. Marvel builds a few days into each film’s schedule to accommodate them, but rarely (as far as we know) does extensive new filming. On the other hand, films like World War Z, Justice League and, more recently, New Mutants have been massively overhauled, although in some cases even that much revision doesn’t salvage the project.

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Key, meawhile, did not go into detail about what the reshoots entailed, but did shower praise on Shane Black: “He’s just a consummate professional, and a consummate writer,” the actor enthused. “He’s a wordsmith! It was a really, really exhilarating experience, and I think that he’s still one of our most vibrant writers of cinema.”

Black is slated to premiere a trailer for the film later this month at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, so we’ll soon get a look at what he’s been cooking up these past couple of years. In addition to Key, the film stars Thomas Jane, Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Yvonne Strahovski, Jacob Tremblay and more. If all goes well from here on out, The Predator attacks again in theaters on September 14.