Shane Black’s experience with Robert Downey Jr. on the set of Iron Man 3 informed how he worked on new flick The Predator.
The movie marks the franchise’s fourth installment, and sees the man-hunting aliens return to earth after a young boy accidentally triggers the Predators.
The cast, which includes Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Jacob Tremblay and Boyd Holbrook, were all given the freedom to improvise during the shoot, a tactic Shane picked up from his Iron Man star.
“On Iron Man (3), Downey would be like, ‘Time!’ and I’d be like, ‘We’re shooting!’ and he’d be, ‘No, shut the cameras’ and we’d go back to the trailer and we’d all write, because he wanted new lines. I mean, maybe it’s a little bit of that,” Shane said to Slash Film. “Maybe I took a lesson from him. We’ve had a great deal of fun incorporating input from talented people who haven’t been looking at the same pages for two years.
“Y’know, Ryan Gosling’s input on The Nice Guys and Robert Downey’s input on anything, I’m happy a) that they elevate the material and b) to take credit for whatever lines they happen to generate.”
The film hits cinemas in September (18), eight years after the last Predator movie was released.
The first movie, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, came out in 1987, and Shane, who had an acting role in it, says he’s happy to honor the original while also shaking things up in his version.
“I think that there’s a basic premise that has to be honored every time you make a Predator film and that’s in some way, whatever the plot turns out to be, it has to, at some level, represent a hunt. But, beyond that I think there’s infinite variability,” he explained.
