Sterling K. Brown is on a roll. The actor took home an Emmy for his work in American Crime Story, landed a starring role in the breakout NBC hit This Is Us, and next, he's set to appear in two major studio tentpoles, Marvel's Black Panther and 20th Century Fox's The Predator.
The actor recently caught up with Entertainment Weekly, and while he's pleading the Marvel 5th on Black Panther, Brown shared a little insight on what to expect from the tone of Shane Black's Predator sequel/soft reboot. And it sounds just like Shane Black's jam.
“Shane has his whole take on it and it’s very different than the original Predator,” Brown said. “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.”
If you're familiar with Black's directorial work, be it the neo-noir buddy comedies Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys, or his polarizing and fearlessly cheeky Iron Man 3, none of that should come as a surprise. Black is a filmmaker with a proven knack for subverting genre expectations and if he's taking on a known property, you can bet he's going to put his own spin on it. I'm thrilled to see what it looks like when he applied his signature sharp wit to the broad canvas of an R-rated action film.
Brown co-stars alongside an impressive ensemble that will go to battle with the iconic intergalactic hunter including Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Thomas Jane, Keegan-Michael Key, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Alfie Allen, Yvonne Strahovski, and Edward James Olmos, though sadly Arnold Schwarzenegger recently confirmed that he declined the opportunity to film a cameo as Dutch.
Brown also joked about his personal history with the Predator franchise and approaching the material as a fan of the films, “I’m a huge fan of Predator,” he said, “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 ass.’ 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 ass all over again.”
The Predator is currently filming in Vancouver, Canada and is scheduled to arrive in theaters on February 9, 2018.
