Antal told us about his next project, a dystopian picture called “Parrafin” and a potential sequel to “Predators,” but we also spoke at length about the picture itself starring Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Oleg Taktarov and Louis Ozawa Changchien.
Antal spoke to us about the ideas of potentially including an Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo in the film, how Adrien Brody fought for the lead role after being offered another character, and was refreshingly candid about his fears of directing a film that a fellow filmmaker (Robert Rodriguez) is producing (spoiler, it turned out all well).
Take us back to early 2009. Robert Rodriguez comes to you and says, I’m doing “Predators” and looking for a director, what’s your initial reaction?
Nimrod Antal: Well, it wasn’t even Robert originally, it was my agent who called me and said, they’re making a “Predator” film, would that interest you in any way? My agent, who didn’t know me from childhood didn’t understand what that meant to me. I was like, “yeah, I would love to make a’ Predator’ film. And I asked him, it’s not an ‘Alien vs. Predator’ film, right?” And he said, “no, they want to continue the ‘Predator’ brand. And I said, “yes, I’m definitely interested.” And he said, “by the way, Robert Rodriguez is producing,” and I said, “Oh, ok,” trying to play it cool, like it didn’t phase me. But I said, yeah, I’m very interested.” And then I met with the people at Fox, then I met with Robert, and ultimately Robert invited me to Austin to Troublemakers Studios. I was left with his crew and he said, “go kill it, show them you can do something.” So he left and I was there with the crew for a few days and we put together an awesome visual presentation and bang. That was it. I got the phone call two days later and they said, Robert chose you to make Predators. I vomited for about half an hour and there’s been blood in my stool ever since.
That’s a great experience. That’s not typical though, that sort of training ground, is it? I know he works with that same kind of crew, he’s got a sort of family and you have to be immersed in the family.
Yes, I definitely had to fit in. I think that was one of the reasons for flying me out to Austin. I don’t think Robert wanted to make a hire and then have this crew looking at him going, ‘what the fuck were you thinking?’ So I think it had a lot to do with making sure the crew was good with me. And then we jumped in. Robert had a draft at that point that he had written a decade and a half earlier, and I had ten days in the room with two writers [Alex Litvak and Michael Finch], which was a film in itself. We banged out a version that the studio and Robert responded to it and that’s what we went off and tried to shoot.
Obviously you read the original version. How was that compared to what you got on the screen?
There were a lot of great elements in Robert’s original draft and a lot of key elements which I responded to right away. The concept of a safari planet was something intriguing, this rogue band thrown together. Which was also very different than typically what you’d see in a film like this. Typically it’s a well-oiled machine going in and then it’s disassembled bit by bit, whereas in this film, the machine is already in pieces, there was never a machine to start with. You have this crazy group of people who are probably quicker to kill one another than anything else, and that was also in the original that I found interesting. So I was able to pick and choose from all these great ideas and pitch him an idea of a simplified version.
How does the “Aliens Vs. Predators” legacy or stain come to mind? Did you take that into consideration at all?
Oh, I love the Dark Horse comics.
No, I mean the movie.
[with emphasis] I love the Dark Horse comics.
[Laughs] People have said there’s a motley crew nature to the cast. But the original one, they were a more well-oiled machine, but still a pretty disparate group of people.
Well, other than the score, other than John McTiernan’s directing, other than the awesome monster, a lot of elements play into what made the original film so special. Billy, Mac, Blain, Dutch, these are all names we remember, and the reason we remember those names is because they were so badass, they were so there, they were so present. They were put out their for the viewers in the best way possible and we were able to get to know these characters and really care for them. So when Mac is drinking a Bud over Blain’s body, you get it. By assembling this awesome, talented cast, they really brought all of these characters to life, and you really give a shit about them.
Robert originally approached Adrien for a different role, and he had fought for the lead?
Yeah, Adrien came in saying, ‘I want [to be the lead character] Royce.’ To be completely honest, when we heard it initially, we thought, ‘that’s not the direction we thought we’d go with this, let’s investigate this further. Let’s think about this for a second.’ You have an Oscar winner, very talented actor, given that’s what we always found to be the most important element, let’s just get good, talented people, and we’ll figure out the rest. Any concerns people had initially about, ‘oh he doesn’t look like Arnold[ Schwarzenegger],’ or, what’s his character supposed to be…
First of all, we weren’t trying to mimic the first film, we weren’t trying to replicated Arnold, because you’re never going to replicate Arnold. Arnold is Arnold, point, dot, end of sentence. What we were trying to do was take another character who’s badass, a different badass, but just as bad a cat as Dutch was, and Royce is that character. I can’t tell you how painful it is for me, and it’s happened, I’ve seen actors, I’ve met with them, not even professionally, but just casually, who have gotten caught up in their own hype and they believe their own bullshit. It’s so painful to see an actor just drag his feet on set and not even really want to be there. And it’s like, well what are you here for then? Every single member in this cast came in wanting it. It was like, I’m going to take it from you if you don’t give it to me, and that’s what I want. I want someone to give a shit about it as much as I do. I want someone so passionate, that they’re willing to die for this thing. Adrien was exactly like that.
You mentioned Schwarzenegger. There were a lot of rumors there about whether he was going to make an appearance. Was there any pressure to have a cameo, did you guys think of it at all?
We did think about, and quite frankly, the idea didn’t scare me so much, but we wanted to do it in a smart way, and if we weren’t able to do it in a smart way, we didn’t want to do it. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger— “Terminator,” “Predator,” I could go on and on, “Conan”— he is everything that I grew up with, and I would love one day to just get a chance to meet the guy. But for this film, right now, it just didn’t seem to play out. He’s governor at the moment, so there’s a lot of other issues, practical issues in addition to creative issues, but we’ll see. I would love to work with Arnold Schwarzenegger one day. But we didn’t want to force it. We didn’t want to force anything that didn’t feel right.
Robert’s taking on this very cool mentoring role and shepherding new projects for new talents like yourself. Do you think you and Robert would create that dynamic again?
Yeah. It’s funny. I went in with all kinds of paranoia— ‘Does he want me to be a figurehead, is he going to try to step in? I don’t want to be a figurehead, I’m not here to co-direct, I mean, what is he going to do?’ And I just recently realized, he was just as terrified. ‘Is this fucking kid going to come in and go 90 days over budget, or 90 days over schedule and 100 million over budget, what’s going to happen here?’ We both had to take a leap of faith. And it was a blessing. Robert was always very respectful, and being a filmmaker, he knew that to micromanage or stand over my shoulder would ultimately lead to me disengaging and that’s the last thing he wanted. He was always there when I needed him, he always stepped back. He knew I needed that, and he gave it to me.
So a director boss vs. studio turned out to be a good one.
Well, in this case, it turned out to be a good one. If I had a different director who turned out not to trust me as much as Robert did, I may have had an issue. Because I’m not going to stand on the floor and let someone else direct while I’m there. Because I’m going to go home. I never even had to get close to that emotion, because he was always very graceful with how he treated me, and he treated me like a brother. And I’m grateful.
So the way “Predators” ends…sequel?
Yeah. Well, listen, I’m down. Are you?
Yes. It’s been discussed then? So if the box office does well, you guys could consider it?
Yes. Between Robert and I, but nothing else so far. We’ll see what happens this next weekend. I couldn’t care less about the box office. But clearly Fox and the people hiring me do. I just want to make a good movie, and we’ll see what happens. I certainly hope people come and see it.
“Predators” opens up this Friday, July 9th.