SYFY WIRE Action & Adventure How Predator: Badlands Composers Created a "Yautja Choir" for Dan Trachtenberg's Sci-Fi Sequel After Predator: Killer of Killers, composer Benjamin Wallfisch reunited with director Dan Trachtenberg for a novel take on the Predator franchise formula. Nov 13, 2025, 1:00 PM ET 2026's Biggest Movies & TV: 'Avengers: Doomsday,' 'Spider-Man,' 'Star Wars' & More Benjamin Wallfisch is living the sci-fi dream. Over the last two years, the prolific composer has found himself crafting music for two of the most iconic genre franchises on the planet: Alien and Predator. "It’s an incredible honor and the most fun I could possibly have as a film composer," he recently told SYFY WIRE over Zoom. "These are things I always loved as a kid, but they’re also so rich, and the filmmakers I've been lucky enough to collaborate with always have such a unique and beautiful point-of-view on how to take it to the next level. So it's been an incredible honor, and I feel really fortunate." The latter IP, which fell under the creative purview of director Dan Trachtenberg with 2022's Prey , returned in 2025 with a pair of feature-length installments: the animated Predator: Killer of Killers and the live-action Predator: Badlands. Predator: Badlands composer on subverting franchise expectations Based on an original story by Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison, Badlands completely flips the Predator formula on its head by turning the titular hunter into a protagonist. The story centers around Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), a juvenile member of the mandibled species tasked with bagging his first-ever big kill, thus proving himself worthy of joining his own clan. His rite of passage takes an unexpected turn, however, when he links up with a Weyland-Yutani android named Thea (Elle Fanning). "You're rooting for what has previously been this unimaginable villain," noted Wallfisch, who co-composed the score with Prey alum Sarah Schachner. "That was a challenge." HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA — NOVEMBER 03: Benjamin Wallfisch attends the World Premiere of 20th Century Studios "Predator: Badlands" at TCL Chinese Theatre on November 03, 2025 in Hollywood, California. Photo: Courtesy of Frazer Harrison/WireImage While Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem and Predators are not a particularly beloved movie among fans, they did sow the seeds of exploring the Yautja home world and culture, which we finally get to see in Trachtenberg's action-packed sequel. "He's completely re-reimagined what a Predator franchise could be," Wallfisch said of the filmmaker. "It’s such an incredible visionary concept that made it a joy." That novel approach also applied to the score, with Wallfisch not wanting it to end up "like any other action score," he explained. "Not just sound, but rhythmic attitude," the composer added. "So we ended up doing a lot of experimentation with Demetrius. We did a special recording session with him to create all kinds of vocalizations and we even made a Yautja choir with him at one point, which finds its way into some of the cues. It was just a whole process of discovery." How Predator: Badlands created a "Yautja choir" The idea of a Yautja choir came from Trachtenberg while they were putting the final action sequence together in post-production and wondering how they could really ramp it up "to another level," Wallfisch recalled. As he shared, "And he just said, ‘What if there was a choir?’ I thought, ‘What…?’ And then we realized, 'Okay, we could actually do that.’ I went away and wrote some suites, and it's actually what ends up on the album. In the end credits there's something called 'Yautja Prayer,' which was this idea of a Yautja choir in its purest form. Then we took from that and used elements of that throughout the score." And so, Schuster-Koloamatangi was brought in to "sing certain phrases" in the fictional Yautja tongue. These recordings were then augmented electronically "to make it sound as gravelly and of the world as we could," the composer concluded. "We used a lot of vocoders and other really cool techniques … It was a great example of Dan throwing a really interesting idea into the mix. We just ran with it and this is what came out." Read more about: Source: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/how-predator-badlands-composers-created-yautja-choir-for-dan-trachtenberg-sequel