Okay, let’s lose it for Coco, the “hot mess” dog from Prey
Director Dan Trachtenberg: "Everyone was like, ‘More dog! We love the dog!’ I was like, ‘You don’t understand. We are using every usable frame of this dog.’”
Aux News Prey
Dan Trachtenberg and Amber Midthunder’s new Predator prequel, Prey, is drawing strong reviews from across the critical and fan worlds this weekend, as Hulu audiences find themselves drawn into its hyper-focused, disciplined take on the long-running sci-fi franchise.
Meanwhile, “hyper-focused” and “disciplined” are absolutely not descriptors that could be applied to Prey’s break-out star: Coco the dog, who plays Sarii, the loyal canine companion of Midthunder’s character, hunter hopeful Naru. Coco/Sarii is one of the big pleasures of the film—and also the Prey press tour, as both Midthunder and Trachtenberg do their best to emphasize their deep love for her, while also being pretty honest about the fact that she was a massive, cheerful, energetic, joyful impediment to actually getting the goddamn movie made.
“She was kind of a disaster,” Midthunder said in an interview with Dexerto this week. “She was a little bit of a hot mess—but in a sweet way.” Midthunder notes that Coco—who’s a Carolina dog, a breed theorized to have been used by indigenous people in the Americas before European colonization, and which still exists in feral populations to this day—was “Not a movie dog. She was literally adopted to be in this movie, and she just happened to be very high-energy.”
Trachtenberg, meanwhile, described how it was “Always a nail-biting moment for us on set, ‘Is Coco gonna like, make her mark and do what she needs to do?’” All of this, again, with maximum affection: “It was sometimes a journey to get there, but eventually she always did. It was very exciting, lots of cheers would happen when we finally got a great take with Coco.”
And, really, we are very here for Midthunder and Trachtenberg both being extremely diplomatic about Coco, presumably lest her publicist hear them saying a bad word about her. Midthunder: “So much of Coco being around was her running wild and doing laps and so excited to see everyone all the time. For me, personally, she was a dream. For making a movie, you know… The character of Sarii is very different than the character of Coco. That shows what a good filmmaker Dan is.”
Trachtenberg notes that he was inspired to add a dog to the film by his love for The Road Warrior. But it turns out there is a peril to adding a lovable dog companion to your movie: “Everyone as we were developing it and showing cuts to friends and family, was like, ‘More dog! We love the dog!’ I was like, ‘You don’t understand. We are using every usable frame of this dog.’”
Anyway: Prey is very good—if not necessarily as good as Coco.
18 Comments
I loved Prey for its intentions, and the production values in execution were much better than I’d expect for an Indigenous-focused, straight-to-streaming horror movie.Having said that, it was not a very good movie. The actual predator was not particularly…present. Which would have been fine under certain circumstances and with a certain script, but the acting was flat—the dog certainly had the most personality—and the plot struggled along without much depth or horror.To be honest, there was one particular fight scene that far outdid the others, IMO, and it did not include the Predator which made me wish they had all been as exciting.But yeah, the dog was cute, and it’s cool to have a horror movie in a mainstream franchise expand its storylines to include a more diverse cast of characters.
Your opinion is bad
Things obviously don’t turn out well for Naru and her tribe, the drawings in the end credits show 3 Predator ships descending on them and the flintlock pistol she has ends up in the Predator’s possession since that is the pistol they give Danny Glover in Predator 2.
PS: It’s Mad Max 2, none of this Road Warrior nonsense!
Only if you stop calling Airplane ‘Flying High’
Dave and Carol say hello.
I don’t know what property those dogs are from, but hello to them as well. If they are still alive I would like to pet them.
They are the two Rottweilers from the streaming Hulu show “The Old Man,” starring Jeff Bridges about a former CIA operative who’s forced to come out of hiding. He names his dogs Dave and Carol and they are extremely well trained. It’s an excellent show, if you have Hulu you should check it out.
Greeaaaat. A woke Predator movie. Just what we needed….🙄
I couldn’t be the only one thinking “If the dog dies, I riot.”
Why did I think the dog was bad CGI while watching?