On August 2, 1996, Robert Rodriguez dated a first-draft screenplay titled Predators, written as a sequel to Predator 2. He was still early in Hollywood and was pitching large ideas across several films. Fox did not shoot this version. The draft later supplied pieces of Predators (2010), but the 1996 plot was a different movie: an older Alan "Dutch" Schaefer was captured by human soldiers in stolen Predator armor, dumped on Arkus 6, and thrown into a gladiator camp of hunters, captive aliens, and a human arms deal.
Galleon Attack And Capture
The draft opened over an ocean at dusk, tracking a worn galleon-style battleship that was trying to outrun something unseen. The sails were stained with blood. Crew in advanced chain-mail mixed musket cannons with modern firearms against cloaked shapes Rodriguez labeled the Invisibles. Men jumped for a lifeboat, smashed it, and were pulled under for an underwater fight. One Invisible boarded, punched a plasmacaster hole through a guard and a door, and found camouflaged soldiers already executed in the next compartment.
The last defender was a large pirate with a number tattoo running down the side of his face: Dutch, older and weathered. He broke an Invisible's neck, armed himself from a weapons case, then blew holes through bulkheads with a sawed-off shotgun when the ceiling caved in. On deck a leader decloaked in Predator armor, three targeting lasers on Dutch's forehead. The leader removed the bio-mask. It was Captain Wilson, a human soldier. The rest of the Invisibles were his men: Buell, Pines, Vegas, and Dak.
Wilson asked the ship's captain if the vessel was his, then charged him with harboring a fugitive and killing Wilson's troops. Dak reported five or six dead, including Jelly, Muldoon, Nix, Sanchez, and Ebsen, with Pendleton maybe dying. Wilson called it a small price for what they got back, then told the squad they were looking at a legend. Pines and Vegas put Dutch in containment. Wilson had Buell burn the galleon. Three metal canisters dropped from a fighter hovering beside the ship and the galleon exploded as the fighter docked with a mother ship.
Trial And The Order For Arkus 6
On the mother ship, Gonzalez, Molineaux, Vegas, and Dak marched Dutch to a cell. Dutch mapped doors, signs, and an open access panel while barely moving his head, then head-butted Wilson, stole his access band, and almost reached a cruiser hatch. Cadillac, eating a bread stick in the corridor, dropped him with a full-sting electrogun. Wilson kicked him while he was down. Cowboy boots stopped in front of his face. They belonged to Jack Carver, called JC throughout the draft, who welcomed him aboard and had him shocked again when Dutch grabbed for his throat.
A teletribunal convened in the communications room. Dutch stood shackled inside a floating electrocuter ring while stern faces on video screens heard the charges: desertion, assaulting a superior officer, theft of a transport, illegal weapons trafficking, and murder. He offered no defense. The screens voted guilty. Dak told a younger guard named Knapper that Dutch used to have medals coming out of his ass, and that this was the last leg home.
That last-leg plan died on a call from Sadler, a high-ranking officer with a Southern drawl. He congratulated JC on the recon, shrugged off six dead, and redirected the ship. They did not want Dutch on Earth. He was going to Arkus 6, a "vastly underused facility" Sadler treated as a dump for unwanted debris. Parish quietly pulled the file: Arkus 6 was listed as a preservational world for protected animal species, with a landing strip about five miles from a base. Sadler doubled the pay, told them to suit up in full armor, and said the site supervisor would take custody. JC accepted. Molineaux was furious they were supposed to go home.
Ship doctor Hardwick and her assistant Samson sedated Dutch for the drop. She clamped a coded metal band around his ankles and warned that a charge would blow his feet off if he ran. He woke thirteen days later with a prison buzz cut. JC was playing oval solitaire in the cell and wanted to know why Dutch, why now, why Arkus 6. Dutch would tell him when it was too late. In the armory the crew suited up in stolen Predator kit: shoulder mounts, wrist computers, camo netting, knives, and mixed laser guns. Wilson briefed it as a cakewalk. Cadillac got a gold tracking ring programmed as Officer Gerald Seville. The planet on approach looked like Jupiter, a big orange world.
Landing On Arkus 6
The ship set down on an overcast strip beside a metal kiosk that was burnt, blackened, and empty. Parish's tracker showed the crew and a small facility about 3.5 miles north. Radio to the post returned nothing. Gonzalez found a huge metallic totem covered in glyphs. He could not read it, but poles like that were usually a warning. Turkey touched a mark, the ground opened, and Dutch caught him by the neck before he fell. Every gun swung onto Dutch until Vegas and Cadillac hauled Turkey up. JC refused to wait for a contact that was not coming.
The jungle trek was quiet for a preserve. Dutch said the trees were alive. Dak snapped off a dead-looking branch and tossed it. The stump oozed yellow-green pus. The "branch" was a camouflaged insect turning its bony head after them. Parish then picked up a low mover. A wet rat bolted out, then a pregnant Pegasus leaped for Pines's tattooed arm. Cadillac killed it with a shoulder mount. Hardwick slit the carcass with a laser light-pen. Three half-formed embryos slid out. She said the animal spat acid and was not food. After a brief standoff of spinning shoulder guns, JC pushed the squad toward the prison.
The Crucified Predator
In a clearing they found a giant X built from tree trunks. Stretched on the far side was a crucified Predator, helmet off, fluorescent green blood running, shoulder gun smashed and dangling. It wore the same armor as JC's crew. Hardwick said she had never seen anything like it and that it was dying. Samson lifted the head with a flash rifle. The hunter woke.
Dutch bolted at the sight of the old enemy. Samson grabbed him, Dutch threw Samson into the bound hunter, and the Predator bit Samson's neck. Blood hit the dirt. Samson fired wild, ripped trees, and grazed Dutch's shoulder. JC screamed they needed Dutch alive. The squad chased him and left the crucified hunter behind. JC picked up Dutch's ankle bands from the ground and could not work out how they came off. Pines tried the prison radio, got an ear-splitting shriek, and bled from the ear. Turkey said something was scrambling the frequencies.
The Hunt And The Camp
Pines went ahead alone. A red beam climbed his wrist, then twenty more spread across his chest. Twenty Predators sat in the trees with shoulder guns trained on him. They fired together. The crew found his arm first, snake-girl tattoo still readable, then the other arm. Vegas opened the gun flaps on his prosthetic right arm and led the search. Nearby, a larger hunter in jet-black armor, the draft's Black Predator, materialized over dead Molineaux, clawed out the skull and spine, and roared. That hunter was the obvious ancestor of the film's Super Predator clan leader, the Berserker.
Parish's monitor swarmed red around Dutch's blue tracker, then the blue flickered out and the red lights arced around the squad. Power died in the trackers. Clicking built until it sounded like a hundred hunters. Nets took Knapper, Dak, Wilson, JC, and Parish. Gonzalez's shoulder mount spun 180 degrees as he fell off a cliff into a mudpit. Vegas emptied the arm-guns until hooks from a flying vehicle wrapped him and lifted him like a fish. About fifty Predators screeched a victory cry. An overhead move then glided over a camp of huts, bonfires, octagonal cages, torture gear, and arenas of mixed sizes.
JC woke in a cage beside Parish's decapitated head, spiked through the right eye. The humans had been stripped of the Predator armor. Samson was infected from the neck bite and asking where the meet and the base were. Dak figured the Pegasus they shot was a sacred animal. Other cages held giant red and yellow mantises, scaly Salamandermen, Teethgnashers, and humanoid cockroach-winged fighters. Hardwick named the hunters Draconia Ostracoccinis in one argument with Dak, a top-secret candidate species for trade. Rocko found dog tags in the dirt: Notzon, R., Orthmann, C., Pirotina, F. They were not the first humans dumped here.
Arena Fights And The Mud Escape
Two cockroach-men killed a smaller Predator in the arena, then fed on the corpse until the camp went quiet. Hardwick cut cage bars with the laser pen. Dutch, already free, called for the toss. She threw it to Samson instead. A shoulder blast turned Samson's hand to meat. Hardwick ran with Parish's tracker box. Cadillac was dragged into the arena, tossed a feather-light Predator spear, blinded the remaining roach, and gutted it from groin to neck. The hunters cheered and hauled him back, covered in yellow viscera.
The Black Predator hunted Hardwick through the trees. Gonzalez, still coated in mud from the cliff, ran into her path. Dutch, mud from head to toe, yanked Hardwick into a pit so thermal vision lost them, the same camouflage trick he used in Predator. The Black Predator's hooked boomerang took Gonzalez's leg below the hip, then a harpoon yanked both hunter and victim into the canopy. Mud lampreys, extinct on Earth in Hardwick's briefing, nearly bit Dutch on the way out. He told her he was not saving anyone. He needed a second person to reach the ship.
Gonzalez came back into camp on a metal prosthetic, injected in the jugular with processed green Pegasus fluid. He foamed, then tore a small Predator's heart out, sprinted on the new leg, and beat armless Pines to death against a tree. A slingshot spiked ball dropped Gonzalez at the camp edge. Predators cleaned the skull with green powder until the eyeballs fried. Pines was locked into a medieval guillotine over a basket of mixed human and alien heads, and a young hunter dropped the blade. Buell read the guillotine as proof of a trade: human prisoners for Predator guns. He named JC, Sadler, and Wilson. Wilson backed into his cage, scratching a red mark on his neck that looked like a hickey.
Teen Predators chased Buell and Knapper into the jungle for practice. Buell grabbed what he thought was a vine. It was a snake. The teen took his skull. Knapper died when a homing missile bisected him and the tree he hid behind. Dak and Rocko lured a Pegasus to spit acid through the bars. The spray blinded Dak. Turkey led him toward the ship. The Black Predator decloaked in front of Dak, mimicked "shithead" in Dak's own voice, opened his throat, and pulled the skull out through the eyes. Turkey ran.
Hardwick and Dutch told Turkey the ship was already gone. Dutch put a gun on him and took him back to camp for whoever knew where it went. Hardwick suspected Wilson, who had tagged Dutch from the start. They hit the camp during Wilson's guillotine, stopped the blade, and Dutch shot the head restraint so Wilson slid free while the blade took a Predator instead. Turkey stripped a wristdial and opened cages. Dutch blew open the alien pens. Teethgnashers, roaches, and Salamandermen turned the camp into a melee. Five Predators on cyclesleds, led by the Black Predator, overflew the mud-covered survivors without seeing them. Vegas still died in the open.
Hardwick and Rocko were thrown into the arena with claw-and-Gurkha polearms and told to fight. She killed Rocko when he begged for it, then ran a Predator through, kicked its shoulder cannon into its own skull, and was buried under ten hunters jumping the rail. That was the last the draft showed of her.
Sadler's Prison
Cadillac stole an idling cyclesled outside an underground prison, drawing the guard hunters into the trees. Dutch, JC, Wilson, Vegas, and Turkey slipped into a shaft whose walls glistened like gold. The inner gate lock was already burned off. Skeletons hung on primitive torture frames. Bone crumbled ice-cold under Wilson's fingers. Military-fashion Predators, decision makers rather than camp hunters, filed out. With them was a human officer wearing a glowing bolt on his neck: Sadler. Dutch matched that bolt to the mark on Wilson's neck.
The hangar held Predator ships, captured alien craft, and JC's own vessel, being loaded by human prisoners whose arms had been replaced with mantis forklifts. Their eyes looked emptied out. Drones marked differently from the camp hunters opened fire. In the burnt cell blocks, cross-spliced inmates stared out: men with tentacles, pincers, Predator legs. A Predator on a bungee cord hoisted JC through a skylight. Dutch shot the hunter's arm off and caught JC in a Predator net. Vegas broke an ankle through rotten concrete. Wilson dragged Turkey away while Predators took Vegas apart.
Dutch and JC beat a hunter in an armory stuffed with stockpiled weapons, then followed a blind humanoid with a man's torso, mantis arms, and Predator legs down a sloping hall. The door opened on Sadler and a room of white-coat doctors. Dutch already knew him. He had shot Sadler's last group to pieces and still got delivered here "safe and sound, just as originally planned." Sadler called the deal an arms trade: human soldiers for chemicals, combustibles, toxins, and fighter fuels the hunters had and Earth did not. Dutch was better than Fort Knox on legs. After he killed a scout Predator on Earth, the hunters made their first personalized request. Sadler never told JC about that contact. Captains and drones filled the lab. Dutch detonated a jar of the alien fuel. Sadler died in the Predators' own crossfire. Dutch and JC dropped an industrial chute into the hangar, blasted Turkey and Wilson free of drone escorts, and stole cyclesleds into the jungle.
The King And The Flight To Earth
Wilson was dumped off a sled. Turkey walked to the empty landing strip, then followed smoke to Cadillac cooking hacked Predator limbs over an open fire and calling it high-protein meat. Turkey ate. A dozen hunters surrounded the banquet. Both men died in a flash of shoulder fire.
Dutch's plan was the crucified hunter. He cut the Renegade down with a Predator blade, rubbed green Pegasus blood into the wounds, and argued that anyone punished like that was an enemy of the camp. The freed hunter grabbed Dutch's throat, then let go and took a cyclesled. Captains ran them down, wrecked the sled, and surrounded them until JC made Dutch drop the rifle. Later the Renegade was at a ship's helm.
Back at camp, Wilson fought the Black Predator in a corral, metal claw-gloves on both arms, with Molineaux, Dak, and Vegas's bodies in a heap. He clawed the hunter's face, impaled a teen spectator, then took a gut tear. A procession arrived: the Predator King on a ceremonial throne built from animal, alien, and human skulls. The King was eight feet tall. Hunters presented trophies. He knighted Buell's killer. A soldier offering a child's skull was beheaded on the spot.
Shackled Dutch and JC were led in as the main offering. JC uncuffed himself, snapped a metallic bolt onto his own neck, and clicked to the King in the hunters' language. He had never been simply the squad commander. Dutch was the offering because he had killed one of theirs on Earth. JC would take the ship and the traded goods home. The King tossed spears to both men. Dutch cut JC's cheek, they went hand to hand, and Dutch threw a spear through JC's skull. He picked up the bouncing neck bolt, clicked at the King, and the King screeched back.
Gunfire from a Predator airship drowned the King out. The Renegade was flying it, raking the arena. Dutch used the skull throne as a springboard into the cargo door. The King snagged his ankle in midair. Dutch aimed down and said farewell to the King, then blasted him off the threshold onto his own disciples. Wilson staggered into the empty arena with the Black Predator's head dangling from a claw-glove, then the remaining hunters took him down. In the cockpit the bolt on Dutch's neck glowed. He clicked a short message. The Renegade punched coordinates. The display stopped on Earth. Dutch nodded: they were next. The ship headed into black.
Differences With The Final Movie
Rodriguez produced Predators in 2010 from a new screenplay by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, directed by Nimród Antal. Dutch was gone. The humans were unrelated killers dropped by parachute, not a military dump of one fugitive and his captors. Arkus 6 became an unnamed game preserve. The crucified hunter and the black-armored clan leader survived as the Classic and the Berserker. The many named alien prisoners shrank to the River Ghost. The draft's camp of about fifty hunters, teen trainees, captains, drones, cyclesleds, a guillotine, and a King became four Super Predators and a much smaller shoot.
The Real Fate Of Dutch Schaefer
Arnold Schwarzenegger skipped Predator 2 and was not attached to this third-film draft, which is one reason Fox rebuilt the story without him. Dutch did return in a DLC pack for Predator: Hunting Grounds, using Schwarzenegger's likeness and voice. The game's older Dutch is scarred, still hunting, and tied in some form to both the OWLF and the Stargazer project, with lore tapes covering decades after Val Verde.
Similarities With Predator: Killer Of Killers
Predator: Killer Of Killers reused several 1996 beats on a Predator-controlled world: a gladiatorial arena, a dominant ruler in the Grendel King, and humans who escape only to see a fleet still coming. The Grendel King lives. Rodriguez's King does not. The animated film's extended ending then showed Dutch himself in stasis, taken the way the galleon sequence took him, which is closer to this draft than anything in the 2010 shoot. A later Earth invasion is also the beat The Predator only hints at, and the first Predator comics already put Dutch's brother John Schaefer against hunters in New York.
Conclusion
Rodriguez's August 1996 Predators draft was a Dutch sequel: human soldiers in stolen armor grabbed him off a galleon, Sadler sold him to Arkus 6, and the camp's King wanted the man who killed a scout on Earth. JC delivered Dutch as the offering, the Renegade flew them off the planet, and the last shot put the stolen ship on a course for Earth. Fox passed on a production that size. Antal later shot a cheaper preserve hunt that kept the crucified hunter, the black-armored leader, and the off-world arena idea, without Dutch, Sadler, or the King.
Tag Categories: Canceled Alien And Predator Movies | Predator Lore
