Predator is an American science fiction action anthology media franchise centered on a film series depicting humankind's encounters with an intelligent race of extraterrestrial trophy-seeking hunters known as the Yautja.

The Predator franchise depicts a series of deadly encounters between humanity and a hostile, trophy-hunting extraterrestrial species known as the Yautja.

Predominantly transpiring in the present day of the 20th and 21st century, the series comprises films that, while largely independent, portray human confrontations with Yautjas in different locations.

The studio hired screenplay writer Shane Black to not only play a supporting role in the film, but to keep an eye on McTiernan due to the director's inexperience.

When compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Jesse Ventura, actors known for their bodybuilding regimes, it became apparent a more physically imposing man was needed to make the creature appear threatening.

Eventually, Van Damme was removed from the film and replaced by the actor and mime artist Kevin Peter Hall.

While flying to Japan with Aliens director James Cameron, Winston, who had been hired to design the Predator, was doing concept art on the flight.

However, with problems filming the creature in Mexico and attempts to create a convincing monster of Van Damme, wearing a very different body suit, failing, makeup effects responsibilities were given to Winston and his studio, R/Greenberg Associates.

Despite his resolution not to voice any more monsters following injuries to his throat sustained during the ADR of King Kong, his agent convinced him to audition.

The invisibility effect was achieved by having someone in a bright red suit (because it was the farthest opposite of the green of the jungle and the blue of the sky) the size of the creature.

The electrical sparks were rotoscoped animation using white paper pin registered on portable light tables to black-and-white prints of the film frames.

[13] According to Schwarzenegger, filming was physically demanding as he had to swim in very cold water and spent three weeks covered in mud for the climactic battle with the creature.

In addition, cast and crew endured very cold temperatures in the Mexican jungle that required heat lamps to be on all of the time.

The film was particularly successful and subsequently inspired a number of comic books, video games and popular anecdotes within the media.

[14] Due to excessive violence and nudity scenes, Predator 2 was the first film to be given the newly instituted NC-17 rating in the United States.

[15] The film cast Danny Glover in the lead role, and reprised Kevin Peter Hall as the Predator.

Also, returning to the role of Anna in the sequel, Elpidia Carrillo was slated to be in two scenes but was cut back to a brief appearance on a video screen in the government agents' surveillance trailer.

In the record-hot summer of 1997, a different Predator arrives in Los Angeles and hunts violent gang members, drawing the attention of the local police force, specifically Lieutenant Harrigan, who pursues the creature as it rampages throughout the city.

The creature itself is in turn being hunted by the secretive government task-force OWLF, led by CIA agent Peter Keyes, which wishes to capture it for study.

With the sale of 21st Century Fox's assets to The Walt Disney Company, the future of the series was called into question, though Bob Iger confirmed that certain properties would remain R-rated.

[16] In December 2019, Dan Trachtenberg was announced to be developing a film under the working title of Skulls, with a script from Patrick Aison, set during the American Civil War.

A buried pyramid giving off a "heat bloom" attracts a group of explorers led by billionaire and self-taught engineer Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen), the original founder and CEO of Weyland Industries, who unknowingly activates an Alien egg production line as a hibernating Alien Queen is awakened within the pyramid.

The Queen is defeated by being dragged down by a water tower into the dark depths of the frozen sea, but not before she fatally wounds the last Predator.

Set immediately after the events of the previous film, the Predalien hybrid aboard the Predator scout ship, having just separated from the mothership shown in the previous film, has grown to full adult size and sets about killing the Predators aboard the ship, causing it to crash in the small town of Gunnison, Colorado.

He removes evidence of their presence as he moves along using a corrosive blue liquid and uses a laser net to try to contain the creatures, but the Aliens still manage to escape into the town above.

Predator, and Prometheus brands) released a VR 360° short film titled Predator vs. Colonial Marines in February 2016, directed by Julian Higgins and written by Peter Weidman in which a troop of Colonial Marines storm a Weyland-Yutani warehouse and encounter the deadly alien hunter.