After four disappointing sequels in a row, the Terminator franchise should probably be retired for good. The law of diminishing returns set in a long time ago, and in retrospect, Jonathan Mostow’s Rise of the Machines was the closest we got to recapturing the magic of James Cameron’s classic two originals.
The third installment ended with Judgment Day proving itself to be inevitable, but none of the following trio of reboots managed to deliver on the promises they’d made. In the space of ten years, we were told that Salvation, Genisys and Dark Fate would be the movie that fans had always wanted to see, marking the first chapter of an all-new Terminator trilogy that would restore the flagging series to former glories.
Obviously, though, that didn’t happen, and Dark Fate was actually one of 2019’s biggest bombs, while star Mackenzie Davis even admitted that people were probably bored of the franchise by now. However, insider Daniel Richtman claims that Paramount are once again pushing for a new Terminator movie and they want it to follow in the PG-13 rated footsteps of Salvation and Genisys, while James Cameron is reportedly keen to keep things R.
Of course, the aforementioned studio doesn’t even own the rights to Terminator and Cameron’s involvement in Dark Fate was limited to a strictly creative capacity, so it remains to be seen how the two parties would be capable of spearheading a new project unimpeded, never mind disagreeing over the potential tone.
Skydance Media control the intellectual property and have done so for the last decade, with Paramount handling distribution for Genisys and acting as one of just several partners on Dark Fate, a list that also included Warner Bros. and Cameron’s own Lightstorm Entertainment. So, even if they would like to keep things PG-13 for the next one, it would seem the decision ultimately rests in the hands of Skydance chief David Ellison.
