The cast of Shane Black’s The Predator keeps getting better and better.
THR reports that the most excellent Thomas Jane is in talks to join the formidable line-up, which includes Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Trevante Rhodes and the recently-added Sterling K Brown, who’s on a fantastic roll at the moment following The People Vs OJ Simpson (for which he won the Emmy) and This Is Us.
The Predator is set to start rolling in Vancouver in February, which is partly why we’re getting such an incredible flurry of casting announcements, a rush of activity described by THR as “furiously casting up.”
Obviously, there’s no description about the character that Jane will play. The plot of The Predator has been kept under Weyland-Yutani-esque levels of security (Yes, we know that’s Alien, come on), and all that we know for sure is that Holbrook (Narcos, Logan) will play the leader of a team of marines and that Munn will play a scientist. It will also probably take place in the suburbs. Maybe.
The site also notes that, if Jane signs on, it’ll be his first studio film in a good while, but genre fans will know that he’s been doing some great work since his time on HBO’s Hung and his brief stint as The Punisher. He’s excellent in the TV adaptation of The Expanse, which is coming back in February, he starred Mike Flanagan’s forever-delayed Before I Wake (seriously, are we ever going to get to see that?) and while he’s popped up in some DTV nonsense, he also put in excellent work in Gregg Araki’s non-genre indie White Bird In A Blizzard. He’s just finished working on the Stephen King adaptation 1922 for Netflix, further proving that he’s pretty much the quintessential King leading man. And let’s never forget that he’s part of the vegan police in Scott Pilgrim.
As to who he could play in The Predator...He could play a gruff authority figure for Holbrook, or indeed for Munn, he could play some kind of community leader if it is set in the suburbs, or he could play the equivalent of the Laurence Fishburne character in Predators (we’d love to see him go a little nuts). There’s a lot we don’t know, but we’re definitely excited that he’s going to be in it.
The Predator is set for release on 9 February 2018 in the US and 2 March in the UK. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
