James Cameron has said Arnold Schwarzenegger’s time as the iconic Terminator is officially over. He instead wants a new generation of characters for the next film in the franchise.
The 78-year-old Schwarzenegger is the only actor to have appeared in all six Terminator films, although he only made it into 2009’s Terminator Salvation via a CGI rendering of his face (perhaps because of this, Schwarzenegger considers Salvation to be the worst film in the franchise).
Here are all the Terminator films released so far:
Terminator has for some time now been languishing in the doldrums, despite similar 80s and 90s sci-fi franchises such as Alien and Predator enjoying a resurgence. The last movie Cameron directed in the franchise was Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He had no involvement with the three sequels that followed but returned as a producer on Terminator: Dark Fate — a movie he said he was “reasonably happy” with, though he suggested it might have worked better without the original stars.
In 2022, Cameron said another Terminator reboot was “in discussion,” but nothing was set in stone, and we’ve heard nothing since. He said at the time: “If I were to do another Terminator film and maybe try to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided, I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.”
Now, on the eve of Avatar: Fire and Ash’s launch in theaters, Cameron has issued his strongest comment yet that a new Terminator film will finally get off the ground. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron said that after Avatar settles down in a few months, he’s going to turn his attention to Terminator.
“Once the dust clears on Avatar in a couple of months, I’m going to really plunge into that,” he said. “There are a lot of narrative problems to solve. The biggest is how do I stay enough ahead of what’s really happening to make it science fiction?”
THR suggested Cameron has indeed solved this narrative problem, although he did not say how. What he did say, however, is that Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be in this new Terminator movie.
“I can safely say he won’t be [in it],” Cameron confirmed. “It’s time for a new generation of characters. I insisted Arnold had to be involved in Terminator: Dark Fate, and it was a great finish to him playing the T-800. There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren’t imagining.”
That’s that, then, for Arnie as the Terminator, even in CGI or AI-powered de-aged form. The 72-year-old Cameron is keeping his cards close to his chest, but it does indeed sound like he wants Terminator to leave the past behind and deliver something truly new. He also insisted he won’t do fan-friendly callbacks, as TV show Alien: Earth has done. “I’m not criticizing it, but I was there for Aliens, what, 41 years ago?” he said. “Something like that wouldn’t be of interest to me.”
“The things that scare you the most are exactly the things you should be doing,” Cameron added. “Nobody should be operating artistically from a comfort zone.”
The question of how a new Terminator project might fit into Cameron’s well-documented hopes for more Avatar movies is an interesting one. Cameron recently admitted he was “absolutely” ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flops, which would mean Avatar 4 and 5, which have release dates, wouldn’t get made.
“I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,” he said. “Actually 30 years because I wrote it in ‘95, but I wasn’t working continuously on it for those first 10 years. Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
