New Predator Hero Revealed And It's Not Schwarzenegger

It looks like the upcoming Predator movie won't feature the return of original star Arnold Schwarzenegger—and it's just as well, because it's hard to imagine the soon-to-be-69-year-old actor going toe to toe with a ginormous alien killer. Director Shane Black hasn't ruled out Arnie's involvement with the project, but during a podcast interview with Empire (via The Playlist), he revealed he has a new hero in mind for his franchise revival.

"The name I've given the [hero] in Predator right now is Quinn Mackenna. And that may change," said Black. That clearly sounds nothing like Arnold's Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer from the original 1987 classic, but we're still hoping Schwarzenegger can make a cameo.

Black has plenty of experience with the sci-fi action genre, as he helped write The Monster Squad, Last Action Hero, and Lethal Weapon, and wrote and directed Iron Man 3 and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. He also played Hawkins, one of Schwarzenegger's team members in the original (he's the guy in glasses who kept cracking jokes).

"It's an attempt to event-ize Predator and make it more mysterious. Predator has been so overdone in a way—very low budget with a guaranteed return, every couple of years there's a knockoff 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," Black added. "'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.'"

The Predator is due to land on February 9, 2018.