Robert Rodriguez’s Predators will be rated R says director Nimrod Antal in an exclusive interview with Coming Soon. The announcement lays to rest the rumors that the sci-fi actioner would be shot for a PG-13 rating to cash in on the kid demographic. Antal also promises that the film will not be CGI-heavy.

He says:

the original film was as good as it was because of the practical, because it was a guy in a suit, because it was the jungle, so we stay true to that. We were in Hawaii for a month in the jungle, so there’s going to be some pretty impressive locations … I think that the fans who may have been underwhelmed by the last two AVP films, I think they’re in for a very pleasant surprise …

Fans were surprised a few months ago with the casting of girly-men Adrien Brody (King Kong, The Village) and Topher Grace (Spiderman 3) in lead roles, a far cry from the buffed-out, bad-asses of 1987’s Predator, namely Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Jesse “The Body” Ventura.

Antal explains:

I think when we cast Adrian, there were a lot of people going, ‘What?’ but at the same time, if we cast a Vin Diesel in that role or if we cast anyone who is Arnold-esque, we would have been attacked for doing that. So we decided early on to go in a very different direction as far as the casting process, but it turned out fantastic. He plays a mercenary in the film and if you look at the guys in Iraq and Afghanistan today, they’re not ‘yolked-out’ Schwarzenegger-looking guys. They’re all very wiry and thin guys, and I think it’s going to play well.

In all fairness, the cast does include bad motherfuckers Walton Goggins (“The Shield,” House of 1000 Corpses), Derek Mears (plays Jason in Platinum Dunes’ Friday the 13th reboot) , and Rodriguez go-to tough guy Danny Trejo (Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn).

Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios is producing Predators for Twentieth Century Fox. The film is slated for release on July 9, 2010.