The story so far…
Originally, before The Halcyon Company went bankrupt they planned to make a new trilogy following the legend of John Connor and the relentless machines but due to the failure of Terminator Salvation the planned Terminator 5 was frozen and the rights to Terminator went back into legal hell.
Along came an investor, a hedge fund to be exact, called Pacifior LLC, they outbid all the major studios and pissed them off royally. They then went away and constructed a pitch and hired Justin Lin to be a part of that pitch. Fans didn’t like the idea of Justin Lin (director of the later Fast & Furious installments) directing the next Terminator movie after McG’s failed outing as director.
Megan Ellison then obtained those rights and formed Annapurna Pictures. She then had meetings with Lin (as part of the pitch), Schwarzenegger and James Cameron (as a favor to his friend Arnold) on the quest to make a better standard of Terminator movie.
Justin Lin was seen as “safe” and at the time was having some (summer blockbuster) success with Fast Five. Annapurna Pictures did not seek out Justin Lin, Lin was apparently an “option”- part of the pitch created by an investment company in order to make a large return on heavy investment as they knew the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to the movies was going to be a pretty big deal. Universal Pictures also wanted to get a hold on the Terminator franchise and Lin is their golden boy, they also wanted Chris Morgan (Fast Five) to write for it… Universal are no longer mentioned in connection to Terminator 5 and instead dug their claws into the new Conan movie and guess who is writing that… ? yes, Chris Morgan.
Lin is no longer connected to T5, something we are quite happy about and Terminator Fans are no longer interested in taking gambles on hot-shot summer movie directors, McG… Jonathan Mostow… what were they even thinking in the first fucking place? It was like letting mongrels loose on a buffet.
Megan Ellison has now enlisted David (her brother) and his company ‘Skydance Productions’ to co-produce Terminator 5 and they are also apparently looking for a screenwriter but Schwarzenegger in October said the script was already being worked on. As Always the facts are distorted but we take the word of Arnold over a blog news story that listed the hedgefund Pacificor as Pacificorp… even if the article was tweeted by Annapurna themselves… ahem.
Annapurna is a film company that excites us, however Skydance is a company that we are currently not sure about. We think World War Z looks like a pile of shit and a regurgitation of ‘I am legend’ whilst cashing in on the latest zombie craze.
The Sun Newspaper now reports that Hollywood insiders are stating that Arnold Schwarzenegger will be back in two more Terminator movies ending the franchise before James Cameron gets the rights back due to a legal loophole in 2018. Terminator Salvation was set in 2018 for a reason, maybe it was an in-joke to signify the end of the franchise. If James Cameron wants to put his baby down he may be able to in 2018 or he could rent out the rights like a cheap whore for other people to use.
It always appeared to be the aim of Megan Ellison to make two more Terminator movies and two more movies will end the franchise in the most appropriate way as two trilogies, that is if she decides to do a continuation and not the much hated idea of a reboot.
So are you excited to see Arnold Schwarzenegger back for two more Terminator movies?