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Predators director Nimrod Antal is going for a specific feel with his July horror pic: namely, he's aiming to deliver a film more akin to the original Predator than its gimmicky subsequent sequels. It doesn't hurt that, under producer Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios banner, Antal enjoys a freedom and creativity that he might not have gotten otherwise -- or that his star, Adrien Brody, is a critically acclaimed, Oscar-winning actor.

After opening SXSW with a first look at Predators, all three men spoke to a small gathering of press in Austin to discuss their filmmaking choices and geeky enthusiasm for the franchise.

Predators follows a group of human mercenaries and killers being hunted on a Predator training planet, so Antal wanted to build the story's innate tension the old school way. His intent was to "take it back to what works in classic horror films [by] trying to keep the monster in the shadows as opposed to throwing him in your face right off the bat." "If you look at the timeline on the first film," Antal continued, "I think 40 minutes into the film is the first time you see the cloaked Predator. So we concentrated on trying to bring that back into it, and I think we were successful."

There were lessons Antal and Rodriguez took from previous sequels Predator 2, Alien vs. Predator, and AvP:R, although both were pointedly unspecific in their criticisms. "It’s easy to be a jerk and go back and say what didn’t work at the time," Rodriguez explained, "and then you go back and say, well, Predator 2 was slightly in the future and that maybe pulled you that much further away from the characters that you could not relate to because they were not current. Or you could say that AvP did not work because it became too much of an ultimate fighting champion bout rather than concentrating on character. So we’ve had the benefit of being able to see in the pictures what didn’t work and now we can know what not to do, but had we been second, maybe we would have done something completely different too."

Because of Rodriguez's reputation for delivering films expediently, he says that Fox left him and Antal to their own devices with little studio intervention. What that freedom afforded was the ability to let loose the creative impulse, resulting in the spate of new Predator concept art that Antal and Rodriguez showed at Friday's footage event.. Though SXSW-goers got a glimpse of Predators and strange Predator creatures of all shapes and styles that the artists at Troublemaker Studios came up with, not all of them will make it into the final film.

"I had forgotten how much art we had cranked out," said Rodriguez. "Most of it was done by three guys that work at Troublemaker Digital who were churning out stuff to see, because I said let’s see a lot of ideas so we can pick the best design. Create with this jawbone or that eye set, this body… and as I looked, we just had so much great stuff that I said, let’s just put it all up so people can see how difficult it would be to go through that process."

One element Antal and Rodriguez wanted to include was a measurement of humor to lighten the proceedings and keep the violent hunter-and-prey set-up entertaining. "For misdirection, humor works," explained Rodriguez, "and for overall entertainment value, when an audience is [audibly reacting] they know they’re having a good time. So you do want that, but you don’t want them to roll their eyes. A lot of my notes on the script were, I’d get to a line and go, 'No one’s going to laugh at this. They’re going to roll their eyes.'”

Some of the best comic moments in the SXSW Predators footage came surprisingly from Adrien Brody, whose character emerges as the leader of the human targets trying to fend off their alien hunters. Still, his performance is as serious-minded as you'd expect given his dramatic acting chops, even if he's not a typical muscle-bound hero with a physicality like original Predator star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I think the intention of hiring me to play Royce was to delve into a kind of flawed, tragic hero and not this kind of typical overtly physically imposing character," explained Brody, who remembers going to see the original film in theaters when he was, as he puts it, "a scrawny little 14-year-old."

"I know I’m not the obvious choice," he continued. "I get that. I know I probably wouldn’t have even been on the studio’s list, let alone down at the bottom. You can ask Robert; I’m very persistent and I’m very focused. I give my word that I know what I need to do to deliver a level of truth and authenticity with a role like this, and also make it fun and exciting."

Though Brody did put on 25 pounds of muscle for the role, it was his psychological preparation during filming that got him prepped, method-style: "My nightly ritual was like poring over survival manuals and military and paramilitary training books. I was reading Sun Tzu, I was studying meditation, I was on a very strict diet, I wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t eating sugar, I wasn’t having sex. I was very focused. I had to kind of go there for me because this is a tremendous opportunity for me. I’m a huge fan of the brand and I’m a huge fan of the genre and the original film. I know that I have a big responsibility to convey a sense of truth in my performance, and it was very exciting."

Predators hits theaters July 7.