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Hunter — Predator 2
From a tropical jungle to one moulded in concrete, the new hunter in Predator 2 chooses Los Angeles as its hunting ground. “The fantasy I always had was to put the Predator in another kind of jungle,” said writer Jim Thomas. “An urban jungle.” The Thomas brothers returned to craft the story of the sequel. Many of their ideas and concepts for the first film could ultimately not be brought on screen. With Predator 2, the Thomas brothers had the chance to implement them into a new story, with the reassurance that — given a more appropriate budget and production schedule — they could actually be brought to life. “Because of the nature of the first film, we had a lot of detail and backstory about the Predator that we had to leave out,” said Jim, “but we’re including all those missing elements in this one.”
Hunter — Predator
“A monster from another planet that kills for sport.” This is the brief, poignant description of the Predator given by producer Joel Silver in a promotional interview. Shortly after the release of Rocky IV, a joke made its way in Hollywood claiming that, since Rocky had run out of Earthly opponents to fight, the next one should come from another planet. Said joke unwittingly inspired the Thomas brothers — Jim and John — to write their first script: Hunter, later retitled Predator. “We had an idea about doing a story about a brotherhood of hunters who came from another planet to hunt all kinds of things,” Jim said, “but we realized that wouldn’t work very well, so we picked one hunter who was going to hunt the most dangerous species — which had to be man, and the most dangerous man was a combat soldier.” The first-time writers, devoid of agents, slipped the script under the door of Fox executive Michael Levy – who shared it with John Davis and Joel Silver, the future producers of the film.