When James Cameron’s The Terminator hit theaters in 1984, it was an immediate hit. The film helped to launch Arnold Schwarzenegger to stratospheric levels of movie stardom and also launched a franchise which included one really excellent sequel, then two other movies that most fans of the franchise would likely rather forget. Still, though 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and 2009’s Terminator Salvation may not have been the sequels people had hoped for, they still made tons of cash and as a result the Terminator franchise will continue to live on in Hollywood.
This morning we received the first concrete word on what direction the next Terminator film might take. According to Deadline Hollywood, two writers have been assigned the task of writing a script for the next, currently unnamed Terminator sequel. Patrick Lussier is best known for his work as an editor, with such films as Scream and the 2009 My Bloody Valentine remake among his credits. He has served as a writer on films like Dracula 2000 and Drive Angry, though his overall experience in writing Hollywood scripts seems both limited and largely unrelated to his newest assignment.
By contrast, the other writer tapped for the next Terminator movie is Laeta Kalogridis. She had a hand in writing the screenplays for both Scorcese’s Shutter Island and James Cameron’s eternally-in-production Battle Angel (a live-action/CGI movie based on the Battle Angel Alita manga series). Kalogridis is described by Deadline as “tight” with Cameron, and should thus be seen as the most intriguing addition to the crew of the inevitable Terminator sequel, at least as far as fans of the first two films are concerned.
As to what this would-be Terminator 5 might be about, we’re still in the dark. We’d expect a cameo from Schwarzenegger now that he’s left the world of politics and returned to film, though at age 65 we wonder if he’s able to contribute anything to the film outside of a winking reference to its predecessors. Further, we’d like to think this new Terminator film will finally depict the raging, futurisitic man-versus-machine conflict hinted at in the first two Terminator films, but properly filming such a thing would likely be very expensive. In the end, we just don’t know enough about this movie to properly speculate on what direction it might take. At least not until producers Skydance Productions and Annapurna Pictures opt to let us in on who they’ve selected to direct the film. We’ll bring you more on this movie as it emerges.