Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley has publicly stated that the TV spinoff series will not feature a crossover with Predator, ruling out an appearance from the Yautja in Season 2 and beyond.
Dan Trachtenberg’s recently released Predator: Badlands — officially the highest-grossing Predator movie of all time, including the AvP movies — is packed full of so many Alien references that it essentially a Predator / Alien crossover movie in all but name. Indeed, one of its stars, Elle Fanning, plays two Weyland-Yutani synths in the movie.
But it seems Alien: Earth will not join the crossover party. Hawley recently confirmed he is “not coordinating” a Predator appearance in the Alien spinoff TV show with Trachtenberg, who he says he has only met once.
“No, not onto the show, I don’t think,” Hawley said of the possibility of a Predator crossover on the Smartless podcast. “I think Dan Trachtenberg, who made Prey and has made the Badlands movie — you know, I loved Prey. I think he’s doing a great job with that franchise. He clearly has a plan there. I’ve met Dan once, we’re not kind of coordinating any of that stuff. So, it’s not really my plan to do it.”
While Alien: Earth is clearly out there in the vacuum of space doing its own thing, Trachtenberg sounds full speed ahead on realizing his vision of a Predator Cinematic Universe. Trachtenberg, who directed franchise reviver Prey and the animated film Killer of Killers before the record-breaking Predator: Badlands, is clearly building towards something, with characters from previous films in the franchise popping up in cameo form across his various Predator projects. Indeed, at the end of Killer of Killers we see Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic Predator character Dutch in stasis, just begging to be thawed for an all-star team up at some point in the future.
While Trachtenberg is keeping his cards close to his chest in terms of his next Predator movie, he told Variety in a recent interview that his intention is that each Predator movie is “a complete thought,” and has learnt a valuable lesson from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“It can all go out the door once we start putting pen to paper on stuff, but I’ve looked as far as I could to feel comfortable about what I’m doing,” Trachtenberg said. “Every movie is a complete thought, not that much unlike the early Marvel stuff before the first Avengers movie, where it’s like, those are great movies, and lo and behold, we’re actually setting up that things could come together in a delicious way. But they weren’t like, ‘See how everything’s interconnected like crazy all of a sudden!’ So I’m trying to learn that lesson and make sure that any of these movies that we do are awesome ideas for movies on their own.”
Variety then pressed Trachtenberg on the possible of tying all his threads together to form an Avengers-style payoff, since be brought the movie up.
“It’s hard,” he responded. “It’s fun to geek out and think, ‘Oh my god, wouldn’t it be cool if…,’ even on a movie that you’d never expect that to happen in. But it’s only cool if the journey there is equally worth taking.”
As for Alien: Earth, Season 2 is confirmed as part of an overall new deal that FX and Disney Entertainment Television have sealed with showrunner Noah Hawley. It begins filming in London in 2026. Be sure to check out Alien: Earth Season 1 Ending Explained – How It Can All Fit Into the Bigger Alien Movie Universe feature to find out more.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
