Get to the choppa! New Predator film in the works with 10 Cloverfield Lane director

This one comes as a bit of a surprise: a fifth film in the Predator series is in the works, with 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg getting behind the camera for the 20th Century Studios production.

According to Deadline, the plot is a secret for now but it will reportedly not pick up where the last entry in the series, 2018's The Predator, left off. The script is being written by Patrick Aison, who has worked on series such as Jack Ryan, Kingdom and Treadstone.

The Predator was written and directed by Shane Black, who also had an acting role in the original 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Black's take on the franchise was a letdown at the box office, earning just $51 million in the U.S. and a total of $160 million against a budget of nearly $90 million (meaning it didn't break even).

The film, which starred Boyd Holbrook, Thomas Jane, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key and Sterling K. Brown, was also not a hit with critics, who only awarded it a 32 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Other entries in the official series include Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010), while the mid-2000s also saw the release of two Alien vs. Predator films. The property has also lived on in comic books and games. 

The Predator franchise is one of several sci-fi properties that Disney inherited following its purchase of what used to be known as 20th Century Fox. Others include the Alien franchise and the Planet of the Apes series. While those latter two have done well at the box office overall and are certain to get rebooted or revived at some point, Disney/Fox execs seem to think there is still life left in the Predator canon as well.

Trachtenberg scored a hit with 10 Cloverfield Lane (a semi-sequel to the original 2008 Cloverfield) back in 2016, and has also directed episodes of Black Mirror and The Boys in recent years.