With work on The Predator underway, Schwarzenegger met Black over lunch to discuss his involvement. Yet anyone hoping for Dutch delight was soon left disappointed when Schwarzenegger confirmed he would not participate.
“They asked me, and I read it, and I didn’t like it—whatever they offered,” he told Yahoo! Movies. “So I’m not going to do that, no. Except if there’s a chance that they rewrite it, or make it a more significant role. But the way it is now, no, I won’t do that.”
Though details are unconfirmed, script pages leaked online which suggested the part would have amounted to little more than a cameo in the final scene of the film—unless a sequel was greenlit.
In an interview with Moviefone, writer Fred Dekker explained, “What we had written was a cameo that would have spring-boarded into a major role in any sequel. He decided it wasn’t enough of a role, and nobody was willing to put money on the possibility of a sequel.”
According to Dekker, Dutch would have appeared in the final few seconds of the film, telling the survivors: “Come with me if you want to live” before the screen cut to black. Likening it to Mark Hamill’s brief appearance in the final seconds of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Black and Dekker failed to heed Schwarzenegger’s warnings with the resulting disjointed, Dutch-less entry disappointing fans and financiers alike.
The film’s failure, coupled with the subsequent success of Prey, which took an approach more in-line with the Thomas brothers’ alternative vision for the franchise, suggests we may never get another dose of Schwarzenegger ordering someone to “get to the choppa.” But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Prior to Prey, Schwarzenegger had made no secret of his disdain for the sequels, telling a Q&A audience in 2015: “So far, no Predator, no matter which one they did after the first one has come out, has been satisfactory to the audience.” In that sense, Schwarzenegger may be better served preserving the legacy of his one and only entry in the franchise, having already seen the impact of his turn as the T-800 in The Terminator watered down by one (or two) too many sequels.
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