The fifth Terminator movie has had many titles and concepts. The name obviously started with Terminator 5, a hoped for sequel to the beloved franchise.
Warner Brothers entered the bidding wars to try and make a sequel to Salvation; they lost the auction and the rights to the highest bidder (Megan Ellison) making sure McG never got to finish his tale, did it really need continuing anyway?
Universal also wanted to buy the rights to make sure a Justin Lin Terminator movie happened. Justin Lin (a Universal asset) was attached before the rights auction (the rights to make a new Terminator movie) he was part of the initial package as he was to make story pitches that would entice a sale. He wanted to do a reboot that would have brought back all the original cast like Hamilton, Biehn etc. Bringing back key players would have been a good move but Justin Lin possibly would have made it into another forgettable summer movie. If Universal won the bid this would most likely have happened but like Warner they didn’t have enough money to outbid Megan Ellison. They should have stayed at home. Both Universal, Warner and other studios were left very disgruntled. We always referred to this Terminator movie as ‘The Fast and The Terminated’ as he had plans to possibly use Diesel and Walker in the movie.
Annapurna wanted to make an R Rated movie with the title ‘TERMINATOR’ simply mentioned in press releases (after all the first movie was called The Terminator, it would have made sense) they also decided that Justin Lin wasn’t the right choice for them and pursued a script that would eventually be completely scrapped, Arnold described it as poor, presumably the writers were scrapped/sacked or the same writers wrote something else instead. Annapurna began to release interesting movies that seemed to be darker in tone and not corrupted by the words #SUMMER and #POPCORN. This was fresh. Sadly Annapurna dove out leaving the owner and purchaser of the rights (Megan Ellison) dropping to a producer credit instead of using her company to front the movie. This then rendered her promises of a Rated R movie redundant as we await confirmation on the rating; Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t even know the rating (apparently).
Skydance got involved before Annapurna dropped out, a partnership of brother and sister, seeing as David Ellison owns Skydance Productions. The move then became titled Terminator: Genesis. Now the studio name of the movie is Terminator Vista…
Still there is no confirmation of what the title of the movie is. Not even a basic synopsis has been revealed nor an official image. It has become such a mystery that we hope it doesn’t become too hyped up, or expectations will get so high they have to create R RATED GOLD in order to win everyone over.
A licensing Expo in Las Vegas now reveals Terminator as a ‘license’ but is it a general license or the movie itself?… we still don’t know.
One thing T3 taught us is to be prepared to wait for the next Terminator movie. It will never be as long as 1991-2003 and hopefully never again will we witness something so shit and unfunny.
Terminator or Terminator: Genesis will either be a successful summer movie, a failure PG-13 movie or they’ll go all the way with the R and do it right and succeed where everyone has failed since T2.
Whatever it is we hope it is good, that comedy is smart but to the total minimum, (preferably none at all). Arnold actually Terminating people would actually be a nice thing to see again… seeing as he kills no humans since the first movie… a Terminator? (laughs) What happened to the 80s Sly vs Arnold body count tolls and competition, Rambo is out-killing The Terminator. In fact Rambo could probably defeat the T-800. Bring back the 80’s competition!
Good luck Alan Taylor! We wish you the best. You have a task on your hands.
Source: Comingsoon.net