Predator: Badlands has opened to rave reviews, but did you know that six years prior to this flick, an Alien vs. Predator anime never saw the light of day following the Disney and Fox merger in 2019?
According to comingsoon.net, during a special Alien Day episode of the Perfect Organism Podcast, Joshua Izzo, the former licensing director at 20th Century Fox prior to Disney’s acquisition of the company, revealed that an anime TV series based on the 2004 film was not only in production, but completed:
There is, sitting at Disney now, at 20th Studios, 10 episodes of a fully completed Alien vs. Predator anime series that I produced. It’s done. It’s in the can. It’s mixed; it’s finished. It was produced and story cracked by Eric Calderon and Dave Baker, two unbelievably crazy talented guys.
According to Izzo, the show was originally pitched as a direct-to-DVD Alien or Alien vs. Predator animated series, to prevent waiting for a theatrical release. The series was reportedly planned to be set after the events of Alien vs. Predator and Alien 4, with the episodes split up across three DVDs in its home release.
Why Was the Alien vs. Predator Show Shelved?
In the special Alien Day episode of the Perfect Organism Podcast, Joshua Izzo was unable to give a direct reason as to why Disney is not releasing the finished show, but speculates as to why:
AvP as a brand was something that was frowned upon at the time at Fox because those movies underperformed…
According to AVPGalaxy, Izzo confirmed that Disney is aware of this series and suggests that maybe they wanted to keep the Alien and Predator franchises separate. He added:
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Netflix was interested, so was Hulu. We actually had distribution ready to go but because the larger studio had these two feature films utilizing the macro Alien and Predator intellectual properties, the animation got back burnered and they said “we’ll revisit this at another time.”
The anime’s writers/consultants, Dave Baker and Eric Calderon, revealed their issues with the show that could’ve led to it being a shelved series during an interview on the Best TV Never Made podcast:
…it doesn’t feel like today’s version of Alien vs. Predator. It feels like someone grabbed this out of the 90s and mismanaged the IP and copied a lot of scenes. And if you think of the quality of product they were trying to put out, it’s a step back. If it had come out in 98 it would have been perfectly in line with where the franchises were going.
But because the director wasn’t in step with Covenant, with the new things happening and there was nothing new [in the anime], and even the design sensibility
It’s unfortunate we didn’t get an animated Alien vs. Predator, but fret not, there’s always Predator: Killer of Killers to fill that void.
Alien vs. Predator Show: Plot and Creative Team Details
The series was directed by renowned anime director Shinji Aramaki, known for his work on Starship Troopers: The Animated Series, Halo Legends, Blade Runner: Black Lotus, and Appleseed. Western animation consultants Eric Calderon (Afro Samurai: Resurrection) and Dave Baker served as writers and story consultants.
The anime’s writers/consultants revealed more details about the shelved series on the Best TV Never Made podcast:
The 10 episode series mainly focused on a teenage engineer who has to protect a young girl (around 6 years old) named Leen, very similar to the relationship between Ripley and Newt. This character is eventually discovered to be a genetically modified alien-human hybrid who can control aliens through pheromones.
A b-plot follows Hank, a soldier type character modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch from Predator, who had an encounter with a Predator many years ago and has PTSD as a result of it. That Predator has now returned to conclude their battle.
This Predator was dubbed Einhander as it has only one hand. It was inspired by the Predator named Ahab from the Dark Horse comics.
The writers also revealed that the main antagonist was a businessman type named Fairbanks, who betrays the main characters (inspired by Aliens).
Here’s an overview of the Alien vs Predator movies so far:
| Movie | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDb | Direcrtor | Metacritic |
| Alien vs. Predator (2004) | 21% | 5.7/10 | Paul W. S. Anderson | 64/100 |
| Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) | 12% | 4.6/10 | Greg Strause and Colin Strause | 29/100 |
What do you think about watching the shelved series? Let us know in the comments.
Predator: Badlands releases in the US on November 7, 2025.
