Now you may remember that not that long ago writer and producer Gale Anne Hurd expressed interest in rebooting the Terminator franchise depending on what direction David Ellison takes with his ‘Skydance Productions’.
Now James Cameron has more or less said the same thing and we know the paths of Gale and Jim do cross quite often so obviously they have discussed the issue together. We have always reported 2018 as being the year the rights revert back to Jim/the original property owners, but 2019 has been thrown around as well but we considered Salvation’s post apocalyptic setting of 2018 to be the in-joke… as this was possibly the time-frame they had to push out 3 Salvation movies (that was the original plan anyway).
Now while speaking to Empire Magazine at the 30th Anniversary Screening of The Terminator he has hinted that once Terminator: Genisys and it’s sequels are over he might be interested in totally re-inventing the franchise.
James Cameron states:
“I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet. I’ve got plenty of time to think about it. It might be fun to completely re-invent the franchise. A lot has to do with what happens in the meantime, people may have Terminator fatigue.”
Terminator fatigue would point to Genisys and its sequels making people disinterested in more Terminator but regardless of if Genisys is successful or not people are always going to be interested in James Cameron’s return to his baby franchise.
As always James Cameron wishes Terminator movies without his involvement well “but just not that well” and he only wishes them well because of Arnold and with Salvation he wished it well to some degree as he was introducing Sam Worthington to audiences (he recommended Sam Worthington to McG for Salvation) and with Genisys he wishes it well because he probably got his writing friend Laeta Kalogridis a job on this new trilogy too when he had a meeting with the Ellison’s/Megan. He has still had use out of the Terminator franchise even without his direct involvement.
We all know that Jim stated his disinterest in ever returning to Terminator in the past was due to the soup “being pissed in” but now he apparently doesn’t see his legacy as being affected by any bad/mediocre movies hitting cinemas without his name attached..
Once again the King of Pandora states:
“It’s not my problem! It’s like being a grandparent, the kids come over and you can send them back! When I walked away from the franchise, I had to do it with the sense that I can invest in emotion. To me, it’s all upside, because if it’s good, it’s good for Arnold (Schwarzenegger), my friend Laeta and if it’s not good? It doesn’t bother me personally.”
He goes on to support his co-writing friend Laeta and Arnold for Terminator: Genisys by saying:
“I’m hoping it’s great. I’d like them to get it right, and based on the script that I read there’s a pretty good chance that it could. It looks like it could be fun.”
Hmmm, one of those words we don’t like again ‘fun’.
At one time we would have loved nothing more than for James Cameron to return to Terminator but he has a lot to prove because Avatar was so very disappointing to us. Arnold and Jim emit auras of businessmen these days and don’t really feel like they live and breathe film like they used to. Avatar is a vehicle to push Global Warming issues and Green Energy initiatives pushed forwards by Arnold Schwarzenegger whilst in governorship. It’s all good business to them and less good movies for us.
You also need to remember that a total re-invention of the franchise could indeed mean that Arnold Schwarzenegger might not be ‘The Terminator’ anymore and big changes could happen that would make our beloved ‘The Terminator (1984) unrecognizable.
On the other hand James Cameron back with his creation could mean gold for the Terminator franchise once again but what if Skydance and paramount beat him to it.? The future is undecided!
James Cameron might be back after-all. The Directornator!
We only want Jim back if Gale is involved as Executive Producer and writer PERIOD. We were also interested in what Bill Wisher had in mind for the franchise (T5/T6 Script Treatments) and hope they would consider him for the writing team too seeing he had involvement with the first two movies too.