Anna Daniels
Dark Horse has made a habit of turning unused screenplays into comics. They previously adapted William Gibson’s Alien 3, and recently announced plans for Alien: The Original Screenplay. Now they’re adding an Alien-adjacent title to the line-up: Predator. The five-issue Predator comic will adapt the unused 1987 screenplay for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
John McTiernan’s Predator could’ve been a different movie, and we’re about to see how different with the publication of the Dark Horse comic Predator: The Original Screenplay. Syfy broke the news that the original script, titled Hunter, from James E. Thomas and John C. Thomas is being adapted into a five-issue comic by writer Jeremy Barlow and artist Patrick Blaine, with Andy Owens inking.
“There’s excitement in seeing what might have been,” Barlow said. “The bones of Predator are there, but the original idea was so different and in some ways, much deeper than what the movie became — and we lean hard into those differences. Turn all of that over to a pair of dynamic artists like Patrick Blaine and Andy Owens, and the results are spectacular. Predator fans are going to lose their minds!”
While the script for Hunters isn’t vastly different from what ended up being Predator, there are enough differences to make things interesting. There’s the look of the Predator itself, which initially looked much, much different than the now-iconic look from the final film. You can catch a glimpse of it on the cover:
For more differences, you can check out the full Hunter script here.
“The first Predator movie is such an iconic, cultural classic,” said Blaine. “To be involved with Dark Horse, re-imagining it from the original script, is an artist’s dream come true! Jeremy Barlow’s script adaptation has been a pure joy to work from, and I think fans of the genre will enjoy this wild new ride through a familiar old tale!”
The first issue of Predator: The Original Screenplay will hit stands on June 10.
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