To celebrate the release of Predators on DVD and Blu-ray this week, Robert Rodriguez invited press to the infamous Troublemaker Studios here in Austin, Texas (or Tejas, as the back of their signature t-shirts proudly states) on Monday. I began the day with an introduction from Elizabeth Avellán, Rodriguez's longtime producing partner, and then a brief tour of the studio. Troublemaker was once former governor (and president) George W. Bush's airplane hangar before Rodriguez and Avellán bought it and transformed it into the studio we know today. This is the place where Sin City was filmed in its entirety, on their sound stage with a massive green screen built in. Machete was filmed on the back lot. And the photos and effects for the promotional character posters were all taken here at the studio after a day of filming. With Troublemaker, Rodriguez and Avellán have broken all of the Hollywood rules. Not content to conform to the costly processes of mainstream filmmaking, they have created a studio that embraces rebellion and boasts the happiest crew on earth. And this is the studio that brought us this summer's fiercest killing machines in Predators.

My first sit-down was with Steve Joyner and Caylah Eddleblutte, the production designers for Predators, who literally built the film from the ground up. As we chatted, behind them lay a portion of the set they built with brush and ground cover and bones, and all around the room hung production photographs -- everything from plant life to weapons had been painstakingly catalogued. Joyner was keenly aware of the significance of this undertaking, telling us, "Everyone here on the art department and everyone here on my crew grew up on Predator, Alien, John Carpenter's The Thing. We're all coincidentally fans of the series. Our biggest fear was doing justice to the series that came before us." Comparing their film to the original, Joyner says, "They set the bar high. It wasn't just a slap-dash, thrown-out, B-grade monster movie. They actually put some style in the cinema and the direction."

Joyner and Eddleblutte began working with Rodriguez as prop masters on From Dusk Till Dawn. When asked how they went from prop masters to full-blown production designers recreating Hawaiian jungles in Austin for Predators, Eddleblutte explains, "We definitely come from the center out, as far as our background." Joyner added, "We came up working on set. We have an advantage, I think, over the other design teams. We've just spent so much time working from the actor outward, whereas most production designers put up the walls and work inward."

Eddleblutte gets excited when talking about John McTiernan's original Predator and how the architecture of the jungle became another character. "One of the things for us was creating this huge jungle environment as a character. A living, breathing, eerie, disturbing, dark place. It's really easy to shoot a jungle badly." Creating the environment was not without its challenges. From the beginning everyone knew that this film would take place on an alien planet, but Joyner and Eddleblutte didn't want to make it too obvious. Joyner explains that they employed some hidden clues. "We had some foliage up front, and then we had sculptural tree trunks that, as you sort of looked back into the foliage, were not of earth." Eddleblutte says they wanted to create a look that -- if one paid attention -- would clearly show "something was amiss."

After our chat, I was taken to a small theater for Rodriguez to show a few of the special features from the DVD and Blu-ray. There was plenty of behind-the-scenes content focusing on how they brought such an iconic monster back to life. We watched two deleted scenes: one in which Topher Grace's character, Edwin, reveals early in the film why he's there, and one where Walton Goggins' character, Stans, tries to hit on Isabelle, played by Alice Braga. The former is an interesting scene that Rodriguez explained as sort of a safety net for the film. Edwin's character is shrouded in mystery until the reveal near the end, but Rodriguez wanted to make sure director Nimród Antal had his bases covered just in case they changed their minds. (Personally, I found Edwin's secret a little obvious and would have enjoyed more time with his character.) The second scene, in which Stans and Isabelle interact, is incredibly funny. It's a little sad that this scene was cut out because in it Walton Goggins shows off his perfect comedic timing as the sleazy Stans.

The final feature was part of a motion comic series feature that follows the characters and why they were chosen. Working with the storyboards and cleverly layering them over textures, the Troublemaker team created their own version of a motion comic. The actors do voice-over work to tell small stories about the lives of their characters before they were kidnapped. The story we watched was that of Cuchillo, played by Danny Trejo.

During the Q&A with Rodriguez back at the sound stage, we discussed the making of Predators and some of the specific choices he made. Rodriguez wrote the script back in 1995 as a side job for Fox to try and entice Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the franchise. This was Rodriguez's first time writing a script that he would not direct. When asked about the experience, Rodriguez  says, "I didn't really like the experience because I thought, ‘Well that's kind of an easy gig, you go write something, you hand it over, you don't actually have to make the movie, and you get paid.'"

But Rodriguez adds that it's never that easy. "You invest a lot of yourself in a script, you have to work on it, you have to come up with these ideas that you end up liking, and then it goes away. So it feels like you give birth to a baby and then they take the baby away from you and hand him off to somebody else. So I never did it again."

Fox came back to Rodriguez with his script a few years ago. They liked it and couldn't remember why the film never got made, so they asked him to direct it. Unfortunately, he was working on Machete, so Fox proposed a different route: Rodriguez could produce it and choose a director. He went with Nimród Antal (Vacancy), who he notes had an interesting vision. "He wanted just to go really dark, and make it just about the chase. He wanted to cut out a lot of stuff and make it just about the chase and the hunt."

When working on revitalizing the script for Troublemaker, Rodriguez didn't consider the other films. He tells us, "I'm going to pretend like I'm still back in 1995 making this as a sequel to the first movie only, so we're not going to take into consideration any of the story points from the other movies. Not to be tied into that. We decided to keep ourselves pretty unlimited." He didn't feel constrained or affected by the other films, because there wasn't a large fan base for the sequels. He adds, "I think if it's a different type of series where you had a great love for all the movies, well then you'd have to consider all of them." When tackling the stigma attached to the notorious Predator, Rodriguez explains, "I'm so independently minded, I'd rather not be told what I can't do or feel like I have to deliver a certain movie. This one was different, because there had already been a couple movies, especially by the last one where people were like, ‘Ah, this Predator series is dead.' There were no expectations, so you had a clean slate pretty much. You could come make as terrific a movie as you wanted to make, and people would just be surprised and happy that you did it rather than have requirements be laid out."

Using only the first film as his guide, Rodriguez was able to expand the possibilities for what a new Predator film could be. This included creatures and species that the Predators could bring to the hunting planet. When asked about a sequel and possibly including some of his larger ideas, Rodriguez says, "I probably want to include some of these ideas, a more expanded universe. If we stayed on that planet, it might be for a little while. There's a lot to explore, which is nice about them not making it their home planet. You can go so many places. You can do a lot of things. There's several ideas, directions we can go, depending on how much they're willing to put into it."

Shortly after our discussion with Rodriguez, we came back to the sound stage for a Q&A with Greg Nicotero, the N in KNB FX. Nicotero has worked with Rodriguez since From Dusk Till Dawn, and is currently working on AMC's The Walking Dead. During the session, two of Nicotero's team were operating a fully functional Predator head and a "Super" (also known as "Berserker") Predator head. Nicotero explains the process he went through to create his own version of the classic Predator, and explains that he's no stranger when it comes to the beast with dreadlocks. "When you're dealing with a creature or an iconic character like Predator we were able to re-create him exactly like he was in the original movie. It's never been done before to faithfully re-create that. I had actually worked on the first film on set for a couple of weeks so we pulled all the photos out and everything that we did -- our job was to sort of re-create that character down to the laser cannon and the armor."

Nicotero speaks highly of Antal and his commitment to the project, as well. "I never met a more enthusiastic guy in my life. He was so dedicated to the project, so determined to really do something fresh and really reinvigorate the franchise and get the feeling that we were sort of back to kind of a classic science fiction adventure with the Predators." When asked about the incredible work of the dogs in the film, we were shocked to find out that all of the dogs were created by visual effects artist Chris Olivia. Nicotero explains, "We built a full-sized puppet. Every time you see the dogs running around, in wide shots running, it was a visual effect that the CGI guys did. Then we built an animatronic one that tackles Walt and tussles with it. And again, what we do with the suit work and the puppet work is a great tool. Our job is to give the director, as an artist, every tool to use at his disposal. Same with visual effects." When asked about his design process, he reveals that the Super-Predator was actually the 12th design, but that they didn't build the creature until a design had been fully established.

At the end of our day we sat down for a special presentation from Fox about the latest wave in digital copy. Pocket Blu is an app you can download for free for your iPhone that allows you to use it as a remote control with your wireless Blu-ray player. Up until now, most studios had only made special features available to download wirelessly to your phone. Starting with Predators, Fox is giving a special code with each digital copy that will allow you to transfer Predators in high definition to your iPhone via the Pocket Blu app in addition to special feature content.

That way, the next time you're abducted and taken to an alien hunting planet to battle savage killers, at least you'll have something to watch.