Boyd Holbrook to replace Benicio Del Toro in “Predator” reboot

PanARMENIAN.Net - Benicio Del Toro will no longer be hunting aliens, but Twentieth Century Fox is targeting a new hunter.

Del Toro has fallen out of negotiations with Fox to star in The Predator, the reboot of the alien action movie series that Shane Black is directing for the studio, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Details of the parting of ways were not revealed.

But Fox is not sitting idly and has already pinpointed its new lead: Boyd Holbrook, one of the stars of Netflix's drug cartel series Narcos.

While Holbrook does not have the star power Del Toro has, Fox is planning on beefing up the supporting cast. And the rising actor does have plenty of love and support from the studio itself: He has appeared in three Fox movies in the last two years, the latest one being Logan, the X-Men spinoff in which he is the movie’s villain. (Gone Girl and Morgan are the other two.)

Casting Del Toro in Predator was a challenge from the beginning. The actor and the studio danced for months around this project, with one obstacle being Del Toro's schedule (among the projects he was supposed to shoot was a sequel to Sicario). Fox even pushed back the start date to February in order to accommodate the actor. Sources say scheduling issues again became a problem when Del Toro's other movies were rejigged.

The studio had no comment.

Predator was the 1987 muscle-bound action movie that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura as commandos being stalked in a jungle by a fearsome alien. John McTiernan directed the pic, which was one of the films that cemented Schwarzenegger’s star power.