Going in to a Shane Black movie, you’re aware of two things: you’re going to laugh (if you like Shane Black movies, that is) and people onscreen are going to die. Which makes a movie like The Predator a perfect outlet for him, because the entire premise of Predator revolves around a group of buddies who are being picked off one by one by a bloodthirsty alien. According to cast member Sterling K. Brown, just because Black is making a big studio blockbuster doesn’t mean that he won’t sprinkle in some of his patented “wicked sense of humor.”

While talking to Entertainment Weekly, Brown couldn’t give any updates on Black Panther due to Marvel’s tendencies toward assassinating any cast members who give away any of their secrets, but he did talk some about the tone The Predator is going to take.

Shane has his whole take on it and it’s very different than the original Predator. It’s got a really wicked sense of humor to it, which I love about it. And it’s got a real camaraderie amongst the main characters that I think folks will be attracted to. That’s pretty much all I can say.

Shane Black has a particularly interesting relationship with death and humor in that, especially in recent movies like The Nice Guys, when someone gets killed off it’s never completely serious. There’s always some ridiculously funny “I shouldn’t be laughing at this but oh man” angle that’s totally unique, and perfect for a Predator movie.

Black and the rest of the impressive ensemble cast should be enough to set this movie apart form all the rest, but Brown also said he’s already getting compared to an actor form the original:

I’m a huge fan of Predator. And, of course, everybody loves Jesse the Body [Ventura] and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and Carl Weathers and Bill Duke. My friends at Stanford used to tease me — being the dark-skinned African-American man that I am — they’d say, “Yo, man, you’re going to start getting all [those] Bill Duke roles when you get older.” And I was like, “I don’t look anything like Bill Duke, you guys can kiss my a--.” So then I booked this movie and I told them and they’re like, “Dude, do you even realize that you’re now Bill Duke???” And I had to go tell them to kiss my a-- all over again.

The Predator hits theaters February 9, 2018.

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