Alien vs Predator: The Two Crossover Movies, Explained

There are two crossover movies, AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007), and both are spin-offs that pit the Yautja hunters of the Predator saga against the Xenomorphs of the Alien films. Think of it like a grand final between two clubs that almost never meet: the fans arrive with firm views about who should win, and the film has to give both sides something to cheer.

The 2004 film is set in Antarctica, and the 2007 sequel moves the fight to the small town of Gunnison, Colorado. The filmmakers change completely between the two, with Paul W. S. Anderson directing the first and the brothers Colin and Greg Strause directing the second. The one performer who appears in both is Ian Whyte, who plays Scar in 2004 and a Predator in 2007.

Video games that share the title, including the ones people search for as game or Extinction, are not films and do not count toward the total. The mainline movies, such as predator 1987 and predators 2010, have their own pages, and the full sequence lives on predator movies in order.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, is the first crossover film, and it reached US theaters on August 13, 2004, with a 101 minute runtime and a PG-13 rating. Harald Kloser composed the score. The full credits and streaming options sit on the alien vs predator 2004 film page.

The story opens when a satellite picks up a heat signature under the ice of Bouvet Island near Antarctica. The terminally ill billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland, played by Lance Henriksen, assembles a team of experts and hired specialists. The group includes the experienced guide Alexa Woods, played by Sanaa Lathan, and the Italian archaeologist Sebastian de Rosa, played by Raoul Bova. They reach a remote whaling station and find that someone has already bored a tunnel down toward a huge buried pyramid. You can read more on alexa woods avp.

Scar is the Predator in the film, played by Ian Whyte and billed third. Screen Daily reports that the production built its sets in a Prague studio and leaned mostly on physical effects for the creatures. Box Office Mojo lists the budget at $60 million.

The 2004 film ends with the Bouvet Island pyramid blown apart, the Queen sent over a cliff, and a hybrid creature tearing out of Scar's chest aboard the Predator ship. Getting there takes a descent into the ice. Below the whaling station the team finds a chamber of skeletons with ruptured rib cages, and their arrival wakes a Queen. Facehuggers implant several people, and adult Xenomorphs follow.

The pyramid's walls keep shifting, which splits the survivors and puts hunters and prey in the same corridors. Sebastian reads carvings showing that the Predators have long used the site as a coming of age hunt, with humans serving as hosts. Alexa concludes the Predators have to win, since a loose Alien would endanger the whole world. When Sebastian is infected, she kills him at his own request.

She then allies with Scar, the last Predator standing, who makes her gear from Alien remains. His wrist bomb destroys the pyramid and most of the Aliens. Up top, the two chain the Queen to a water tower and tip her off a cliff into the sea, though she mortally wounds Scar first.

Further Predators land on the ice. Their elder marks Alexa's face and gives her a spear, and she drives off across Antarctica in a snowcat. In the final shot, Scar's body lies in state on the Predator ship, and the hybrid bursts out, a hint of more trouble.

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007), directed by Colin and Greg Strause, is the second and most recent crossover film, released in the US on December 25, 2007, with a 94 minute runtime and an R rating. Brian Tyler composed the score. It was the brothers' feature debut, and Variety and Screen Daily both note their background at the effects house Hydraulx. The film page for avp requiem holds the full cast.

The story begins aboard a Predator ship carrying a dead hunter and captured facehuggers, which is overrun when a hybrid creature, born from a Predator and an Alien, hatches and kills the crew. The ship crashes near Gunnison, Colorado, and the hybrid and the facehuggers escape into the woods and sewers, where they begin infecting locals.

A veteran Predator, played by Ian Whyte, receives the distress signal and travels to Earth to clean up. The human side is led by the ex-convict Dallas Howard, played by Steven Pasquale, and the soldier Kelly O'Brien, played by Reiko Aylesworth, with John Ortiz as Sheriff Eddie Morales. Tom Woodruff Jr. is credited as the Alien. The UK release followed on January 18, 2008, and Australia opened the day after the US.

Requiem ends with a tactical nuclear bomb erasing Gunnison, killing the Predator and the hybrid, while four survivors are pulled out by troops. The route there starts after the embryos are planted in the townspeople. The veteran Predator destroys the wreck, clears away traces of the first victims, and follows the creatures through the sewers to a power plant, where his weapon fire blacks out the whole town.

In the dark, Aliens hit teenagers at the school pool and kill Kelly's husband Tim, and Kelly slips away with her daughter Molly. Dallas, Ricky, Kelly and others regroup in a sporting goods store and arm up. National Guard reinforcements are wiped out, and a helicopter evacuation is called for the hospital roof. There, the survivors find the hybrid building a hive.

The brawl that follows strips the Predator of much of his gear, and Jesse dies by accident. Dallas grabs the Predator's plasma pistol, and he, Ricky, Kelly and Molly escape by helicopter while the Predator and the hybrid mortally wound each other below. The bomb falls, and its blast downs the helicopter, but the survivors are found alive.

In the closing scene, Colonel Stevens passes the plasma pistol to Ms. Yutani of the Yutani corporation, a hint that the company will study the technology.

The hybrid is a creature born from a Predator and an Alien, and it appears in both crossover films. It first shows up at the end of AVP: Alien vs. Predator, when a new creature bursts from the chest of the fallen Scar on the Predator ship. That image is the hint of further trouble that closes the film.

In Requiem, a hybrid hatches aboard a Predator ship carrying a dead hunter and captured facehuggers, kills the crew, and brings the ship down near Gunnison. The film uses it as the main threat for the humans, since it keeps spreading the infection through the town and eventually builds a hive in the hospital. As the veteran Predator tracks it, the pair end up fatally wounding each other.

To recap the creatures: the Predator, or Yautja, is the hunter with the cloak, the heat vision and the wrist bomb, and the Xenomorph is the hive creature with the Queen and the facehuggers. The hybrid borrows from both. For the species on its own, see yautja and the predator creature page.

The order is AVP (2004) first and Requiem (2007) second. In the full Predator saga, they are the third and fourth films by release date, after predator 1987 and predator 2 and before predators 2010.

By chronological order, the saga places the two crossovers fifth and sixth. Predator: Killer of Killers comes first, then Prey, then Predator (1987) and Predator 2, which is set in 1997. After the crossovers come Predators, The Predator and Predator: Badlands.

In what year does the first crossover take place? The studio and trade coverage give no calendar year for the story, although the chronological order sits it after Predator 2. The predator timeline lays out the placement, and the predator movies in order page gives both lists in full.

No, the first crossover did not flop: AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) earned $177 million worldwide on a $60 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. That is a split of about $80 million domestic and $97 million international, so the film made more than half its money overseas.

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007) took $130 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. Its domestic gross of about $42 million was roughly half of the first film's, while the international gross of about $88 million held up better.

The pair earned about $308 million between them. For comparison, Predators (2010) took $127 million worldwide, and The Predator (2018) took $161 million. The wider numbers are on the predator box office page.

No third crossover has been announced, and no release date, cast or production status exists for one. The most recent coverage of the Predator franchise's future, from ComicBook.com on February 12, 2026, says director Dan Trachtenberg is still working out next steps, and that an Alien crossover is unconfirmed.

That makes any third crossover a rumor, and it stays one until a studio says otherwise. What is on record is that Predator: Badlands (2025), directed by Dan Trachtenberg, is an Alien adjacent film: its synthetic character Thia was made by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and Alison Wright voices MU/TH/UR. That is not a crossover, but it shows the two franchises sharing a corporate thread.

The status of any new film is tracked on the new predator movie page, and for where to stream the two existing crossovers, see where to watch predator.

In my opinion, neither creature wins outright, because the films themselves end in a draw. A Predator is stronger one on one thanks to the cloak, the heat vision, the plasma weapons and the wrist bomb. A Xenomorph wins on numbers, since one Queen and a handful of facehuggers can overrun a pyramid or a town. Perhaps the fairest way to put it is that the Predator is a sniper and the Xenomorph is a flood.

The evidence in the films backs that up. In the 2004 film, the Queen mortally wounds Scar before she falls, and in Requiem the veteran Predator and the hybrid fatally wound each other. As such, both fights end in destruction: Scar's wrist bomb levels the pyramid, and in 2007 the military drops a nuclear bomb on the town. Neither film ends with a Predator simply walking away, which makes it hard to call the hunter clearly stronger.

Why was the crossover bad, according to its critics? In my view, the PG-13 rating of the first film takes the bite out of creatures that were R rated in Predator (1987), where one hunter and one soldier in the mud made every kill count. Requiem returned to an R rating, but a town with its power knocked out leaves a lot of the action in the dark, and I found it harder to follow than the pyramid sequences of the first film. That being said, the pyramid itself is a good idea: a hunting ground where the Predators breed their own prey.

My pick for anyone starting out is the 2004 film, because it has the stronger setting and gives Alexa Woods a real arc. If you prefer your Predator stories with a single hunter and a clear hero, go straight to Predator (1987) or Prey instead.