This is perhaps one of the strangest movie spin-offs in Hollywood history. Did you know that Predator was a Rocky sequel? It’s true to some extent. Had the Rocky films never been made, Predator would probably never have existed, ruining so many good memories and memes. How exactly did all this come together? The idea for Predator came about following Rocky IV.
These two movies couldn’t be any further apart from one another. One has gained international recognition for its sporting greatness and nearly as many sequels as these movies. The other is a down and dirty alien action movie. Surely Predator couldn’t be a Rocky sequel, or could it?
So you are probably wondering, how could Predator, an alien film, be a Rocky sequel? The Rocky movies were an extremely successful franchise spanning several decades, over three in fact. Following the release of Rocky IV in 1985 there was a joke circulating around Hollywood that if there was going to be a fifth installment of Rocky, he would have to fight an alien because he had run out of Earthly challengers. This seemed like a challenge to two aspiring screenwriters.
Two screenwriters, Jim and John Thomas took the joke seriously and wrote a screenplay based on the joke. Obviously the initial version never made it to a production stage, but it was modified. This modified screenplay ended up being the hugely successful Predator movie that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, and was also slated to star Jean-Claude Van Damme as the Predator before he withdrew. I’ll admit that it would have been great seeing those two men at the height of their action acting careers confront one another. But nonetheless, it was still missing Stallone. Read why Van Damme withdrew from the Predator film here.
Who would have guessed it. Stallone managed to find even more Earthly challengers to fight, making another two movies. One at an age when he should be more concerned about which walking stick to use for the day.
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