The Predator was almost going to be very fond of doing splits. Originally a then-unknown, Jean-Claude Van Damme was hired to play the lethal alien hunter in 1987’s Predator.
However, Van Damme was fired early in production and was replaced by Kevin Peter Hall. Why exactly Van Damme was fired is something of a cinema urban legend, as no one can quite agree on what happened.
Of the different stories for why Van Damme was let go, this one might be the best: Van Damme was fired as Predator because he refused to stop kickboxing. According to visual effects supervisor Joel Hynek:
I was in Joel Silver’s trailer, and he had called for Jean-Claude to come see him. And he comes in the trailer and Joel starts saying, ‘You gotta stop kickboxing!’ — because [Jean-Claude] wanted to kickbox — and he was telling him, ‘Look, the Predator is not a kickboxer.
‘ And Van Damme was like (Van Damme voice), ‘I must do that; that’s how I see the Predator.’ And Joel said, ‘Well, you’re fired. Get out of here.’ And Van Damme says, “Kiss my ba….!” and walks out, and that was the end of that.
It’s the 30-year commemoration of Predator, and The Hollywood Reporter has amassed an enormous oral history of the in the background story of how the famous science fiction spine chiller was made. In case you’re a Predator superfan, it’s totally worth the read, as it subtleties the many number of battles the creation went through.
It additionally endeavors to address the secret behind Jean-Claude Van Damme’s terminating, and the appropriate response is that nobody truly knows why. A few distinct renditions of the story exist, including this one from Joel Hynek.
The special visualizations boss was with maker Joel Silver when everything went down, and as per him, Van Damme was given up on the grounds that he continued attempting to cause the Predator to do kickboxing. The Predator isn’t actually a blended hand to hand fighting sort of outsider, so Silver revealed to Van Damme to thump it off.
At the point when Van Damme said no, Silver did how you manage any entertainer who will not participate and terminated him. Credit, however, to Van Damme for advising Silver to kiss his balls despite the fact that it was generally his issue. That took…well, you know.
If one thing is clear about Van Damme’s firing, it’s that no one is clear about what happened. THR collected six different stories on what went down, three of which are first-person accounts. Everyone is in agreement that Van Damme didn’t like the suit (a feeling shared by everyone else involved) and that he clashed with Joel Silver.
The stories diverge from there and the reasons include: Van Damme was too short to play the Predator, he kept passing out due to the heat, Fox executives didn’t like the suit and Van Damme was collateral damage, he complained too often about the filming conditions and he shattered the $20,000 head for the costume. All are really distinct, detailed reasons, so why no one is on the same page is a mystery in of itself.
