Will There Be a Predator’s Gold Sequel to Mortal Engines?
At this point, the honest answer is no official Predator’s Gold movie sequel has been announced.
The books give filmmakers a clear path forward, but the 2018 Mortal Engines film did not make the kind of money needed to launch a big-screen franchise.
That is the blunt traction wheel of Hollywood reality. Mortal Engines was designed as a possible franchise starter. It had Peter Jackson’s name, Wētā’s design muscle, Christian Rivers directing, and four main Philip Reeve novels waiting behind it.
But a sequel needs more than affection from book fans. It needs box-office confidence. Predator’s Gold would require new cities, new environments, airship sequences, Anchorage, Arkangel, the Ice Wastes, and a whole new stage of Tom and Hester’s story. That is not cheap television money. That is enormous moving-city money.
What Peter Jackson Said About Sequels
Before release, Peter Jackson was careful about sequel talk. He did not promise Predator’s Gold. He said the job was to make the best Mortal Engines film possible and then see whether audiences showed up.
Jackson’s position was practical: make the first film work, then let the audience and studio decide whether the other books could follow.
That was the right answer at the time. Mortal Engines was not Star Wars, Marvel, or Lord of the Rings. It was a stranger proposition: giant mobile cities eating smaller towns in a far-future post-apocalyptic world where old technology has become relic, myth, and weapon.
That is a brilliant premise. It is also a hard sell.
What Philippa Boyens Said
Philippa Boyens was more openly excited about where the story could go next, while still making the same practical point. The first film had to work as a film before anyone could seriously think about sequels.
Her most tantalising comment was about wanting to see the bigger and meaner traction cities from the later books: Panzerstadt, Arkangel, and the wider war between Tractionists and Anti-Tractionists.
That is exactly why Predator’s Gold remains so frustrating as a missed opportunity. The first film only hints at the scale of Reeve’s world. The second book opens the map.
Lore note: Predator’s Gold is set two years after Mortal Engines. Tom and Hester are travelling in Anna Fang’s airship, the Jenny Haniver, when they become caught up with Anchorage, Professor Nimrod Pennyroyal, and the threat of Arkangel.
Why Predator’s Gold Would Have Made a Strong Sequel
Predator’s Gold has a cleaner sequel hook than people sometimes realise.
London is gone. Tom and Hester are no longer children from opposite sides of London’s myth. They are young survivors trying to make a life in the air. The Jenny Haniver gives them movement, freedom, and trouble. Then Anchorage appears: fragile, strange, and hopeful, trying to escape the brutal logic of the Traction Era.
That is a strong sequel engine.
Anchorage gives the story a haunted city with emotional stakes. Arkangel gives it a northern predator big enough to replace London as a threat. Pennyroyal gives it lies, vanity, false adventure, and comic rot. Hester’s choices become darker. Tom starts to learn that surviving the first book did not make the world simpler.
In other words, Predator’s Gold is not just “Mortal Engines 2.” It is the book where the saga starts growing sideways.
The Box Office Problem
This is the part that killed the sequel conversation.
Mortal Engines did not perform well enough. It opened weakly, struggled in the United States, and never became the global breakout that Universal needed. For a film with a huge budget and franchise ambitions, that was a fatal problem.
That does not mean the film has no fans. It absolutely does. The production design, concept art, city effects, Shrike material, and general worldbuilding still have a strong following. But studios do not usually greenlight expensive sequels because a film becomes a cult curiosity later.
Predator’s Gold would have required confidence. The first film did not earn enough of it.
Could Mortal Engines Work Better as a Series?
A streaming series still makes more sense than a direct theatrical sequel.
Mortal Engines is not short of plot. If anything, the film’s biggest issue was compression. Reeve’s world needs time: London, the Gut, Airhaven, Anna Fang, Shrike, Valentine, MEDUSA, Batmunkh Gompa, the Guilds, and the Anti-Traction League all need room to breathe.
A series could let the story move at the right speed. It could spend an episode inside London before Tom falls from it. It could make Hester properly abrasive. It could give Shrike the strange sadness he needs. It could show Airhaven as a real floating culture, not just a stopover. It could make Anna Fang feel like a legend before she becomes a sacrifice.
The best version might not even begin with the 2018 film continuity. It might restart from the books.
The Anna Fang Option
A prequel series about Anna Fang would also work.
Night Flights already gives the shape of it. Anna’s life before Mortal Engines has the right ingredients: airships, espionage, Anti-Traction politics, smuggling, flight, danger, and the slow making of a legend.
It would also avoid one of the biggest production problems. A show about Anna Fang could be smaller than a full traction-city spectacle every week. It could focus on pilots, ports, spies, air routes, city politics, and the cost of resisting Municipal Darwinism.
That is still Mortal Engines, just from the sky rather than the tracks.
Thunder City Keeps the World Alive
The most interesting new development is not a film sequel. It is Philip Reeve returning to the world with Thunder City.
Thunder City is set before the original quartet and opens another door into the Traction Era. That matters because it proves the universe still has movement. There are more cities, more machines, more broken histories, and more stories to tell beyond Tom and Hester.
If any producer ever wants to revive Mortal Engines for screen, Thunder City also helps show that the universe is not locked into one failed film adaptation. The setting is larger than that.
So Will Predator’s Gold Happen?
As a direct sequel to the 2018 film, Predator’s Gold is very unlikely.
As a rebooted streaming adaptation, an animated series, or part of a wider return to Reeve’s world, Mortal Engines still has potential.
The books are not the problem. The world is not the problem. Predator’s Gold would give a sequel Arkangel, Anchorage, Airhaven, Pennyroyal, Tom and Hester in the Jenny Haniver, and a much wider sense of the Traction Era.
The problem is the usual one: money, risk, rights, timing, and whether anyone in the industry wants to put giant cities back on screen after the first attempt stalled.
For now, Predator’s Gold remains one of those great unmade sequels: easy to imagine, hard to fund, and still sitting there on the ice, waiting for Arkangel to appear on the horizon.
The glorious concept art above is by Nik Henderson.
