Shane Black Reveals The Main Character In 'The Predator' And Sorry, It's Not Arnold Schwarzenegger

There are many reasons why the original Predator is an all-timer, but chief among them is its cast of human characters. For most of its first act, the alien hunter remains hidden and we watch as Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch and his team of soldiers are firmly established as unstoppable, untouchable, and entirely believable killing machines. Only then, once they have been showcased as a group of guys who cannot be beat, does the creature begun to pick them off with stunning ease. The result is jarring but shocking – this thing is powerful and smart enough to kill these guys?

When the credits roll (and spoiler alert for a thirty-year old movie), Schwarzenegger is the last man standing, but he's taken one hell of a beating. Then Predator 2 moved on to a new location with new characters. And then we all had a fever dream where two Alien vs. Predator movies happened. And then Predators took us to another new location with another new set of characters. Will Shane Black's upcoming The Predator finally bring Dutch back into the fold? Maybe. Maybe not. But if so, we now know that he won't be the main character.

Black and his longtime producer Joel Silver recently participated in a Q&A with Empire (via The Playlist) to promote the U.K. release of The Nice Guys (which is great and shame on you if you skipped it) and the subject eventually drifts to The Predator. Although Black has remained intentionally tight-lipped about the project, he did reveal the name of the film's lead character:

The hero of the new one, the name I've given the guy in Predator right now is Quinn Mackenna. And that may change.

Quinn Mackenna is a pretty terrific action hero name and knowing Black's knack for casting, a pretty terrific action hero will probably end up playing the role in the movie. And while this news does indicate the Schwarzenegger's Dutch won't be headlining The Predator, it doesn't rule out a potential cameo or supporting role. After all, the Austrian Oak did say that he was going to meet with Black to talk about the film.

Black goes on to talk about his goals for the film and emphasized what he's already said before: he wants The Predator to be an event film that will actually get people excited. He goes into detail below and he finds time to take a pretty good swing at Adam Sandler:

We live in a culture where everyone's like, "[I want to] know everything about it before it comes out, and I want to be able to see every moment, and i'm gonna go back and forth on the goddamn YouTube channel and get every goddamn moment and every Easter egg." [But] I'll tell you a little bit about it. It's an attempt to event-ize the Predator and make it more mysterious. The Predator has been so overdone in a way — very low budget with a guaranteed return, every couple of years there's a knock off churned out. It's gotta get to the point where people buy their tickets in advance instead of saying, "Oh honey look, another Predator movie. Nah, no, Adam Sandler's got this thing on TV let's do that instead." I want people to say, "The Predator is coming, I know it's coming, we want to see it, it's mysterious, interesting, it's got the same sense of wonderment and newness that Close Encounters had when that came out." That's what we want. That's very impossible to achieve, but we're going to try.

Considering that there hasn't been a great Predator movie since 1987 (although Predator 2 has a few fans), it's very exciting to hear Black talk about this project in this way. We're talking about one of the all-time-great movie monsters here. It's time to give him the respect it deserves.

The Predator is scheduled to open on February 9, 2018.