Shane Black’s new Predator ain’t got time to bleed, but it does have time to do some swift recasting and announce an intriguing new working title. After murmurs that he was on the way out, Benicio del Toro has officially left a project now going by the name ‘Ollie'. Narcos’s Boyd Holbrook has stepped into the role.
No official reason has been given for del Toro’s departure, but with MCU work, Soldado and Star Wars on his schedule, it’s not hard to imagine that timings might have been a factor. Holbrook, currently working on Logan with Hugh Jackman, is best known as DEA man Steve Murphy in the Netflix narc drama. He's also had more minor roles in Gone Girl and Scott Frank’s A Walk Among The Tombstones.
As for Ollie, that’s the unlikely working title that’s been affixed to the project. It’s a strange one considering the movie already has a title – The Predator – so we can only guess what Black and his writer Fred Dekker have up their khaki sleeves with this. Is this name to The Predator what ‘After Party' was to Avengers: Age Of Ultron or will the movie arrive in cinemas politely requesting to "be referred to as Oliver" until you’ve got to known it a bit?
Either way, Black is promising big things for a franchise that seemed to have breathed its last with Nimród Antal’s Predators. “We want to achieve the same sense of wonderment and newness that Close Encounters had when that came out,” he's explained. "It’s very impossible, but we're gonna try. It just has to feel like a powerful story that has a lot of flavours and textures.”
Filming is expected to kick off in February 2017. The Predator/Ollie's US release date is scheduled for 9 February, 2018.