While the Predator franchise hasn’t exactly been as fantastic as the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring debut, excitement is building for Shane Black’s upcoming revival of the series, The Predator. We were pretty disappointed by Benicio Del Toro’s exit earlier this month, but the prospect of Narcos star Boyd Holbrook replacing him was more reassuring. And Black himself is a promising aspect of the project — his Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and this year’s The Nice Guys were both fantastic and funny action movies. He’s very excited to start working on the movie, and already has big plans about the general vibe and how it’ll differ from its predecessors.

In an interview with Collider to promote the book On Story: Screenwriters & Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films, Black talked a little bit about The Predator and what sets the reboot apart from the previous films in the franchise.

I think the Predator movies have slightly veered from typical sci-fi in that there is a sort of thriller aspect to them. I think it should be scary, I think it should be funny, and I think ultimately it should be wondrous and about perceiving things that human beings very seldom get a chance to see… I don’t mean movie audiences, I mean characters in the movie. I’m not saying the movie will be nothing anyone’s seen before (laughs).

When asked about whether it’ll take any cues from the 1987 movie, as far as the characters go (which haven’t been revealed yet), Black said:

I think it’ll be interesting to get a group of credible guys—the hallmark of the first one is you have guys together that are kinda funny and self-referential and also very tough. I don’t know that we’re going to deviate over much from that, but there are at least a couple of factors that we’ve deliberately chosen to make it not just that group of buff, tough guys.

Predator was certainly a buff, tough movie, and it’ll be interesting to see how Black puts his own spin in the franchise. It seems like he’ll be taking as much from the original as he can without straight-up remaking it, and then giving it a slightly different tone. And he won’t be tap-dancing around any violence in favor of a lower rating either: The Predator will definitely be rated R.

Fox has been very cooperative. I mean part of it is the success they had with Deadpool, but I also made a case—and I think they agreed—that fans of the Predator generally, probably aren’t looking to go to see a PG-13-rated version of it. It would be more of a letdown if it was sort of tailored to a family friendly audience than if it were allowed to play out to the same scale and level that the first R-rated one did.

The Predator is set to start filming in February, and is scheduled to open in theaters February 9, 2018.

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