Next Friday, Director Nimrod Antal’s third movie, the crime-thriller Armored starring Laurence Fishburne, Matt Dillon and Jean Reno will open nationwide and he’s already hard at work directing Robert Rodriguez’s relaunch of the Predator franchise, Predators.

“So far, it’s been great, and I think that the fans who may have been underwhelmed by the last two AVP films, I think they’re in for a very pleasant surprise,” Antal told us tentatively when asked how it was going.

Since the movie’s title seemingly will include Robert Rodriguez’s name even though the Austin-based filmmaker isn’t directing, we were curious how involved Rodriguez was in the actual making of the movie. “Robert hired me, so obviously I’m very grateful for him giving me a shot. He is involved in the screenplay and we’ve had a lot of conversations, and any big decisions I want to make, I always speak to him about, but he’s been very gracious and he’s been letting me do my thing. He’s really let me perform and he’s let me dance, so again, I’m grateful to him for that.”

While Rodriguez has embraced doing things using CG animation, Antal has preferred the aesthetics of doing things practical and in-camera over the years. Have they been able to find a happy balance there? “I think we both recognize that the original film was as good as it was because of the practical, because it was a guy in a suit, because it was the jungle, so we stay true to that. We were in Hawaii for a month in the jungle, so there’s going to be some pretty impressive locations.”

While working with a lot of Rodriguez’s crew, Antal was also able to return to his Hungarian roots by having his Kontroll Director of Photography Gyula Pados shoot the film. “He was someone who I really wanted and he’s someone whose talent is enormous, so I was lucky to have Gyula come back on this one.”

One thing that Antal did confirm was that Predators was being shot to be an R-rated film, so if nothing else, that should make a lot of fans happy in the long run.

CLICK HERE to read the entire interview.

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