In Hollywood’s current era of prequels, sequels, reboots, spin-offs, and whatever adaptations, Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to buck the trend of milking a franchise for all its worth by retiring from all future Terminator projects.
“The franchise is not done. I’m done,” the bodybuilder turned action cinema icon admitted during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“I got the message loud and clear that the world wants to move on with a different theme when it comes to The Terminator. Someone has to come up with a great idea.”
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The Governator added: “The Terminator was largely responsible for my success, so I always would look at it very fondly.”
“The first three movies were great. Number four [Salvation] I was not in because I was governor. Then five [Genisys] and six [Dark Fate] didn’t close the deal as far as I’m concerned.”
“We knew that ahead of time because they were just not well written.”
Incidentally, powerhouse director James Cameron has been flirting with the idea of a Terminator reboot, which he’ll ostensibly make time for somewhere in between all the feature-length Avatar follow-ups and his long-gestating Hiroshima movie.
“If I were to do another Terminator film and maybe try to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion but nothing’s been decided,” Cameron revealed on the Smartless podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.
“I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.”
While Cameron hasn’t directed a franchise instalment since the masterfully executed sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day, he has returned on the odd occasion in a storyboarding and producing capacity, namely for the most recent entry Terminator: Dark Fate, which re-welcomed Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 / Carl.
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“We spent several weeks breaking story and figuring out what type of story we wanted to tell so we would have something to pitch Linda,” James Cameron told Deadline back in 2019.
“We rolled up our sleeves and started to break out the story and when we got a handle on something we looked at it as a three-film arc, so there is a greater story there to be told. If we get fortunate enough to make some money with Dark Fate we know exactly where we can go with the subsequent films.”
Sadly, despite garnering more favourable critical reception than any of the other three Terminator films post-Judgement Day – Rise of the Machines, Salvation, Genisys – it failed to recapture the imagination of global audiences and eventually shaped up to be a box office flop: generating a meagre US$261.1 million in receipts against a budget of US$196 million (note that Hollywood films are required to double their production costs in revenue to break even).
