Now tied to the Predator saga, the filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg is taking a breather from the horror-comedy Freddy the 13th.
At this stage, you could call it expertise, an obsession, or perhaps both. Dan Trachtenberg has directed four films, and three of them belong to the Predator franchise, starting with Prey in 2022, then Predator: Killer of Killers (co-directed with Josh Wassung) and Predator: Badlands in 2025. And that’s not even counting the enigmatic Predator looming in his plans, the hypothetical Prey 2, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return teased at the end of Killer of Killers.
So it seemed Trachtenberg was chained to a franchise that Disney now owns after it acquired the Yautja-controlling 20th Century Fox in 2019. But because betting everything on one project is rarely a good bet, the director behind 10 Cloverfield Lane signed a substantial deal with Paramount in early 2026. And that’s where he’s lining up his next project, which reads as a big tribute to the cult horror films that defined the 1980s.
THE FRIDAY THE 13TH CLAWS
According to Deadline, which broke the news from the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2026, Dan Trachtenberg will direct an animated adaptation of the Freddy the 13th comic by Yehudi Mercado. The title, which obviously nods to Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street and to the Friday the 13th franchise centered on the killer Jason Voorhees, sets the tone.
The story follows the misfortunate and cursed Freddy Vanwinkle, the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child family, who struggles in nearly every aspect of life, unlike his brothers and sisters. Everything changes the night he, while looking after his nephew and niece, inadvertently dispatches the legendary Nighty Night killer. He didn’t ask for this, but he inherits Night Night’s powers and his place in the monster marketplace automatically. And as rival killers begin to surface to hunt him down, Freddy Vanwinkle has thirteen nights to break the curse and avoid becoming the new Night Night.
Freddy the 13th will be a family-friendly, gently funny yet spooky film, rated PG-13 as the studio announced.
AND PREDATOR, THEN?
Trachtenberg has already dipped his toes into animation by co-directing Predator: Killers of Killers. This take on Freddy the 13th will bring him back to where it all began for him, since that’s where he first stepped onto the scene in 2016 with 10 Cloverfield Lane, the “sequel” to Cloverfield that teamed Mary Elizabeth Winstead with John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr., a film that exploded at the box office with over $110 million on a $15 million budget.
Freddy the 13th will thus be Trachtenberg’s first project under the Paramount deal he signed in early 2026 to direct and produce films for three years, alongside his trusted collaborator Ben Rosenblatt.
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