Prey director Dan Trachtenberg believes the final length of the Predator movie was always intended to be 97 minutes.
Speaking exclusively to on Prey’s UK trip, Trachtenberg surprisingly revealed that the sci-fi action movie’s runtime was “meant to be”. Like this? Because every cut of the next Hulu movie, no matter who edited it, always hit the 97-minute mark.
Interestingly, Trachtenberg’s revealing comments were also not part of the actual interview. Before the official chat began, ‘s Tom Power commented on Prey’s pleasantly short runtime; the existence of a film of less than two hours being a rarity these days. It was then that Trachtenberg revealed the surprising quirk behind Prey’s final runtime and joked that it was apparently destined to happen.
“By the way, each cut of this movie was 97 minutes long,” he explained. “There wasn’t a first cut that was four hours long – it was always that length. The first pass the editor did and then my first cut… everything was always the same. The film [runtime] has not changed. Yeah, we added and subtracted so many scenes and stuff, but somehow it always came out at the same runtime. It was like it was meant to be.”
Suffice to say we shouldn’t expect a director’s cut anytime soon. However, Prey’s final runtime also caps off a particularly fascinating coincidence within the Predator film franchise – all of which can be streamed on Disney Plus in the UK and Hulu in the US.
So far, each of the four Predator movies that preceded Prey have had a remarkably identical 107 minutes. Well, almost every other entry anyway – Predator 2, which hit theaters in November 1990, technically runs 108 minutes, but what difference does a single minute make when a fortuitous opportunity like this presents itself?
Regardless, Prey’s final cut simultaneously breaks the curious runtime sequence of the Predator movie while also adding its own unusual quirk to the long-running movie franchise. If 20th Century Studios and Disney decide to greenlight another entry in the beloved series, we can’t help but wonder if Prey 2 – or whatever it’s called – will also run for 97 minutes. Time will tell – and yes, that pun is completely intentional.
Set 300 years before the events of the 1987 original, Prey stars Amber Midthunder as Naru, a woman from the Comanche tribe who wishes to be treated as a skilled and fearsome warrior among her people. Setting out to prove her worth, Naru begins hunting an unidentifiable creature in the territory her clan occupies. However, Naru soon realizes that the prey she is chasing is a bloodthirsty extraterrestrial, who has been sent to Earth – armed with a deadly arsenal of weapons, no less – to hunt humanity for sport. It turns out, then, that Naru isn’t the predator in this cat-and-mouse game – she’s the prey.
For more Prey-based content, head back to later this week for our review, plus our exclusive, in-depth chat with Trachtenberg, Midthunder, and producer Jhane Myers.
Prey will forgo a theatrical release when it arrives on Friday, August 5th. The Predator prequel will be available to stream on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus in non-US territories.