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Diabolical: The Boys pilot director Dan Trachtenberg was sneakily plotting Predator SFX on set

In both The Boys episode one and Prey, there's a very similar invisibility effect. And that's no mistake - Predator chief Dan Trachtenberg is behind them both

You have to hand it to him - Dan Trachtenberg is a guy with his mind on the future. Now, we know him as the (highly successful) creative lead of the Predator franchise, but even before Prey showed up and reminded us what fun it was to have humans facing off against Yautja, Trachtenberg's heat-vision was on the series' next big moves. Hell, Trachtenberg was even working on Predator while he was on the set of a very different hit franchise: Prime Video's The Boys.

The Predator: Badlands director revealed his double-dutying in a recent interview with Empire Magazine, in which Trachtenberg recalled his time working on The Boys pilot (Oh yeah, it was Trachtenberg that directed the pilot episode of The Boys, remember?).

"I remember when I did The Boys pilot," Trachtenberg said, "I had already pitched Prey because there's a superhero in the first season called Translucent, who would go invisible. And I wasn't supposed to say anything, but I told the showrunner, Eric Kripke, 'I'm actually working on a Predator movie, and I'm gonna redefine what the cloaking is.'" 

"The original fight with Translucent was that Karl Urban and Jack Quaid turn on the sprinklers to see it," he continued, "So in trying to figure out what could be more clever, I came up with, 'Karl gets his butt kicked and then spits blood on it to see it,' which, of course, was the seed of the idea of the reveal of the Predator in Prey, where he cuts the bear and all the blood drops down and reveals it."

The Boys is streaming now on Prime Video. Dan Trachtenberg's Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers, and Predator: Badlands are all streaming on Hulu. 


They are brash, unforgiving, and a little rough around the edges... and they're the good guys! The heroes of Prime Video's The Boys, led by Karl Urban's Butcher, go up against the 'superheroes' that is the Seven, led by Anthony Starr's Homelander, leader of the Seven. With that show's five seasons plus spinoffs such as Gen V, Diabolical, and reportedly more, there's a lot to the Boys Franchise, and we're here to help... with: 

 

Grant DeArmitt

Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.

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