This New 'Predator' Reboot Poster Ain't Got Time To Tease

If you haven't revisited John McTiernan's Predator recently, do yourself a favor and give it a watch. There's a reason this franchise has survived beyond two weak sequels and two dire spin-offs that saw the title alien hunter facing off against the Xenomorphs from the Alien series. And that reason is simple: the original Predator is, for lack of a more elegant phrase, really goddamn great. It's one of the best genre movies ever made, melding '80s military bravura, slasher horror tropes, and testosterone-soaked science fiction into one unforgettable and bloody mixture. Plus, the title alien is just about the coolest-looking monster Stan Winston ever had a hand in creating and that's really saying something.

My love of the Predator concept vastly outweighs my disappointment with Predators and my genuine disdain for the Alien vs. Predator movies, so the impending sequel/reboot (rebootquel?) has my piqued my curiosity. Although news regarding this movie has been awfully quiet, a new poster has appeared out of nowhere, reminding the world that this project is in the works and seemingly revealing the film's actual title.

Originally posted on the official Predator Facebook page, the poster isn't the most inspiring thing in the world, but there's just enough here to sink your teeth into if you're willing to jump to a few conclusions. As you can see below, the poster is really just a close-up of a Predator's ugly masked mug, with the phrase "You'll never see him coming" plastered in gigantic letters over the image. Because he can turn invisible, you see.

However, the real detail to note here is the title, written in red letters and tucked in-between bits of the tagline. Yep, that says The Predator, which is the exact kind of title you pick for a project that wants to be a sequel and a reboot. It's simple and it's clean, recalling titles like Rocky Balboa, Rambo, and Jason Bourne. It's the kind of title that tease a back-to-the-basics approach while the lack of a number in the title promises a fresh start. It's kind of amazing just how loaded that "the" really is.

We know that Shane Black and Fred Dekker turned in their screenplay for The Predator in December, but we haven't heard anything since then. The surprise arrival of this image suggests that things are moving forward in some capacity, but no actual details are publicly known at the moment. In August, producer John Davis lavished praise on Black's approach for this film, which he may also direct:

I've read a lot of his script and I think it's genius. I think it's genius and I think it's entertaining, and what it did is recreate a famous franchise in a different, interesting way; looking at it from a different light. He's just an amazing writer-director. He's got a way of looking at this that makes you excited again.

Although Black is currently best known for directing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3, he famously rewrote significant portions of the screenplay for Predator. He even created a role for himself (Hawkins, a.k.a. the first guy to bite the dust), so he could be more involved as he played script doctor on the film's troubled set. If anyone is going to understand what makes a Predator film tick, it's going to be him.

Naturally, this poster doesn't tease a release date or anything of that nature, so now we just have to sit around and wait until something happens and hope that Black, to paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch, sticks around.