Originally published January 30, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
Fan of MMA or not, there’s no denying that UFC star Conor McGregor is a hot commodity. WWE wants him in some sort of role, Game of Thrones showrunners have cast him in a bit part, and now it’s come to light that due to money and filming duration issues, he has turned down a key role in Shane Black’s The Predator.
AVPgalaxy has quoted the following from McGregor who spoke at An Experience With, stating: “I’ll tell you there’s a lot of offers that I’ve turned down. I got offered The Predator movie. There’s a new Predator movie coming out and the guys came to me – did you see that horse thing I’ve done, the horse racing? That was like three days’ solid work for a hell of a lot of money, for three days. During that three-day course, the people from Predator who are having this new Predator movie, a blockbuster… They came in and tried to sell the whole shit. ‘We want you to be the main guy and you’re gonna fight Predator’ and I’m like ‘This sounds brilliant! How much?’”
“Not enough,” he continued. “We went back and forth negotiating and the number climbed up but if I was to do it [it] would mean eight weeks in Canada, in Toronto or somewhere. It’s too long a time. You can’t do a million things at once. The Pegasus thing was one thing because it was like three days, in and out. But seven, eight weeks on a film set is heavy as fuck. Plus it would have crept in around when he’s due [McGregor’s unborn baby boy]. I didn’t want to get tricky with that so I turned down that offer.”
The cast of The Predator includes Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), Thomas Jane (The Punisher), Jacob Tremblay (Room) Sterling K. Brown (This is Us, The People v. O.J. Simpson), Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele) and Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse). Directed by Shane Black, the film goes into production next month and is currently set for a February 9th, 2018 release.
