Vancouver locations for Shane Black’s The Predator

There have been two sequels over the years – though Schwarzenegger returned for neither of them – as well as a pair of crossover films with the Alien franchise.

The latest movie pitches a new group of misfits and mercenaries against the iconic alien monster.

In the context of the story, a secretive government facility called Stargazer has been built to defend humanity from the alien predators.

Interiors of the Stargazer setting were built on stages at Mammoth Studios over the course of five months. A couple of other key story settings were built on Mammoth stages as well, meaning that at its height the pre-production process involved more than 500 construction crew.

Much of the shoot for The Predator took place at night in outdoor Vancouver locations. The city’s Cleveland Dam and a separate sewage treatment plant both stood in for separate exterior views of the Stargazer lab.

Unfortunately for Black and his team, the schedule was affected by an uncharacteristically cold and wet British Columbian winter.

“The rain in Vancouver is a given,” says Bill Bannerman, one of the movie’s executive producers. “You always know that between October and April it’s going to be dark and gloomy and wet, and it comes and goes. You know that around Christmas time it may snow for one day, and then it goes away. But last year it probably snowed five times.

“Every member of the Vancouver community said ‘We’ve never seen this in 40 years! This was the wettest, coldest winter of all time.’

"I’ve never seen it rain more often on the days that it shouldn’t, and that never stopped. It hurt us because our story is not set in winter - it’s set in late fall, around Halloween.”

Earlier this year, Vancouver became Canada’s top production hub, having had nearly a 50% surge in international filming in 2016-17, according to figures from the Canadian Media Producers Association.

See KFTV's production guide for more on filming in British Columbia.

Image: 20th Century Fox