Just when you thought Shane Black’s The Predator couldn’t jam any more actors into its ensemble, here comes another casting announcement. Jacob Tremblay, who earned raves for his turn in Room, will play the son of The Predator‘s lead character, played by Boyd Holbrook. And he won’t just be some kid in peril.
Image: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tremblay’s character is “autistic and bullied in school but becomes a key player in the fight due to his preternatural ability to learn languages”. This will be the first time any Predator movie has had a little kid as one of its leads — and though there’s been a certain degree of crude communication between humans and Predators throughout the series, it sounds like The Predator might steal a page from Arrival and break down the language barrier more than ever before.
Whatever the case may be, this new casting news offers the best plot hint we’ve yet gotten about The Predator, other than its “domestic” setting. Along with Holbrook (his character, per THR, is “an ex-Marine who discovers the existence of fierce aliens but finds that no one believes they exist” — a little X-Files flair, there?), the cast includes Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), Sterling K. Brown (The People v OJ Simpson), Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse), Keegan-Michael Key (Key and Peele) and the just-added Thomas Jane (The Expanse). The movie is about to begin filming and is due out in February 2018.