Sci-fi action sequel Predator: Badlands will be rated PG-13 rather than R in order to “broaden out the audience,” its producer says. Despite the titular alien’s tendency to skin its victims and rip out their spines, the latest Predator movie won’t be R-rated like most of its predecessors. Predator: Badlands, directed by Prey's Dan Trachtenberg, ... Predator: Badlands will be rated PG-13 in the US
Sci-fi action sequel Predator: Badlands will be rated PG-13 rather than R in order to “broaden out the audience,” its producer says.
Despite the titular alien’s tendency to skin its victims and rip out their spines, the latest Predator movie won’t be R-rated like most of its predecessors. Predator: Badlands, directed by Prey's Dan Trachtenberg, will be rated PG-13, it’s been confirmed.
The idea, according too producer Ben Rosenblatt, is that there’ll be so much monster-on-monster mayhem that audiences won’t notice the less restricting age rating.
“We’ll see where it ends up, but our hope for it is that it can be a PG-13 that feels like an R,” Rosenblatt told IGN. “That’s kind of our hope. And really, what that’s about is just being able to broaden out the audience for a movie like this.”
Predator: Badlands stars Elle Fanning as Thia, a damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic human who teams up with a disgraced Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi). Stranded on a planet filled with hostile creatures, the pair fight for survival in what Rosenblatt says will be a bloody action-adventure. But because the blood’s white and green rather than red, it should secure a PG-13 from the MPAA.
Read more: What went wrong with The Predator?
“We don’t have any humans in the movie and so we don’t have any human red blood,” Rosenblatt said. “So we’re hoping that’s gonna play to our advantage. We’re going to go as hard as we possibly can within those constraints, and we think we’ll be able to do some pretty awesomely gruesome stuff. But in colours other than red.”
It remains to be seen how the British Board of Film Classification will rate the film in the UK; PG-13 is theoretically similar to our 12A rating, but if the board consider Predator: Badlands’ action to be too intense, despite the green rather than red blood, then they’ll likely give it a 15 rating. Alien Vs Predator (2004), the last film in the franchise to get a PG-13 rating, was also given a 15 in the UK.
As IGN’s piece points out, there’s been a certain amount of grumpiness from Predator fans who like the franchise’s gore and mayhem. For what it’s worth, this writer’s old enough to remember the build up to Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s release, and how fans were concerned about the word going around that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 wasn’t going to kill anyone, and that it was getting a 15 rating rather than the original’s 18. The resulting film turned out rather well.
Predator: Badlands is out in UK cinemas on the 7th November 2025. The new edition of Film Stories magazine has a marvellous piece about alien buddy movies like Predator: Badlands, and is available now from our store.
