Filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg’s “Prey,” a new spin on the “Predator” franchise, sets its action around the Comanche Nation three centuries ago and follows a young female warrior (Amber Midthunder) taking on a version of the highly evolved alien predator.
Those involved reportedly went to great lengths to offer an accurate representation of the Comanche and ensure it was authentic to Indigenous peoples. As a result, the cast boasts a host of Native and First Nation actors.
Today’s trailer showed that one concession that was made was that the Indigenous characters speak in English. However Slashfilm spoke with both Trachtenberg and producer Jhane Myers who confirm that the film will also be the first new release movie to be also be made available in the Comanche language via an alternate audio dub track.
Trachtenberg says the creative team struggled with “the ‘Hunt For Red October’ thing” referring to that film’s famous early scene in which Russian characters start out speaking in Russian. Then a deliberate visual shot conveys to the audience they’re still speaking Russian but switches things over to English.
They never quite came up with a way to make that work, so instead, the film was shot with both in mind (the trailer has scenes done in both languages). The pair explain it thus:
Myers: “Just the fact that people will have a choice, the world will have a choice to listen to the whole film in Comanche is amazing.”
Trachtenberg: “Both languages are spoken, but when you hear English, it’s as if it’s Comanche. But what Jhane is speaking to is on Hulu, there will be a Comanche dub of the movie, so you can watch the entire movie in Comanche with the original actors returning to perform their roles.”
Myers hopes what “Prey” is doing with the Comanche language will inspire other directors to follow suit so when producing films that have a native narrative, they’ll do the film in that language.
“Prey” will be available on Hulu on August 5th.
