There’s a new Predator movie in town, and it’s actually one of the best action movies of the year, but Prey has a big legacy to live up to. When it came to the casting process for Prey, director Dan Trachtenberg used an iconic line from the original ‘80s movie to tell Amber Midthunder she had secured the lead role.
Prey arrived on the streaming services Disney Plus in the UK, and Hulu in the US, on August 5, and has taken the world by storm since its release. We loved the thriller movie here at The Digital Fix, and our Prey review labelled this effort the best instalment in the Predator franchise since the original Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from 1987.
In an interview with The Empire Film Podcast, Midthunder revealed she learned she was to be the star of the epic new alien movie when she received a call from Trachtenberg who tried to line up an iconic line from the first Predator movie. Unfortunately, Midthunder didn’t understand the reference and totally ruined the moment.
“I got a call from a random number and it was Dan [Trachtenberg] and I was like, this is either going to go good or bad,” Midthunder recalled. “And then he was like, ‘If you had to get somewhere by air and you couldn’t go by land, sea, or legs, what would you do?'”
Fans of the classic monster movie will know what’s coming of course, but the setup was lost on Midthunder at the time. To be fair, in such an anxious moment, we think our brain would stop working anyway. Good job we’re not the ones in the horror movie setting!
“I said hang glider, and he was like, ‘No, it has an engine.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, a hot air balloon.’ And he was like, ‘No, you’re supposed to say get to the chopper!’ Because you’re going to be Arnold,'” Midthunder added. “And I was like ‘Ugh, I failed’ but then I was like ‘Oh!’ So, not quite what he had in mind. Not, like, the dream scenario of how that would go. But that was how he told me.”
If you’ve seen Prey and liked what you saw, you might be interested to know where Prey was filmed, or check out our guide on whether there will be a Prey 2.