With a little over four months to go until Terminator: Genisys resets the beloved sci-fi franchise, star of the series Arnold Schwarznegger has confirmed what we suspected all along. The actor-politician, who rose to prominence playing the badass cyborg in James Cameron’s original Terminator, spoke out after a recent lecture in Europe to verify his appearance in the movie’s sequel.
“Yes, of course, next year,” he said, when asked by a reporter from fan site The Arnold Fans (via Coming Soon) if he would be a part of production on the sixth instalment. After the forthcoming fifth entry was confirmed for a summer 2015 opening, Paramount verified that two additional sequels had been pegged for release. The sixth – which we now know will commence production next year – is slated for a May 19th, 2017 release. The third film in the reboot trilogy is expected to arrive on June 29th, 2018.
Dubbed a “reset” by star Jai Courtney, who stepped into Michael Biehn’s shoes to play the role of Kyle Reese, Genisys will toy with the franchise’s established story to create an entirely new timeline. Re-filming two key scenes from the original movie, the plot will splinter off as we learn that Sarah Connor was orphaned by a Terminator at a young age. Since then, she has been raised by a guardian Terminator (played by Schwarzenegger) whom she calls “Pops.”
At the helm of the new trilogy is Game Of Thrones and Thor: The Dark World director Alan Taylor, who completed principal photography last August based on a script by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier. Starring Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Matt Smith, Byung-hun Lee, J.K. Simmons and Dayo Okeniyi, Terminator: Genisys will open in theaters in 2D, 3D, IMAX and IMAX 3D on July 1st.
The beginning of Terminator: Genisys, the first of three planned films that Paramount hopes will relaunch the beloved sci-fi franchise, is set in 2029, when the Future War is raging and a group of human rebels has the evil artificial-intelligence system Skynet on the ropes. John Connor (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ Jason Clarke) is the leader of the resistance, and Kyle Reese (Divergent‘s Jai Courtney) is his loyal soldier, raised in the ruins of post apocalyptic California. As in the original film, Connor sends Reese back to 1984 to save Connor’s mother, Sarah (Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke), from a Terminator programmed to kill her so that she won’t ever give birth to John. But what Reese finds on the other side is nothing like he expected.