If you are determined to reboot a fractured and scattered movie franchise such as Terminator, there is only one way to tie it all together before moving forward, and that’s with the original cyborg himself. Speaking recently to TheArnoldFans.com at the Arnold Sports Festival, Schwarzenegger took time to tease the upcoming fifth instalment – Terminator: Genesis.
“I’m really looking forward to that because, as you know, the last time they did the Terminator, it was when I was Governor, and so I couldn’t be in that movie. But, now I’m back again and they are very excited about having me in the film, and David Ellison, who has produced all the big movies lately, has plenty of money to do it well. He’s in partnership with Paramount Pictures who are going to release the movie through their distribution. I’m really looking forward to that and it’s going to come out July 4th weekend in 2015. The movie preparation is going well. The script is fantastic, so I’m really looking forward to this film.”
Yes, he’s really looking forward to it, and David Ellison certainly does like a profitable franchise, having executive produced Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Star Trek Into Darkness, among others. The rest of the cast will be optimistic too, and are all brand new to the series. Emilia Clarke (Game Of Thrones) is on board as the iconic Sarah Connor, Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty) will play John Connor, while Jai Courtney (A Good Day To Die Hard) will fill the shoes of Kyle Reese. Alan Taylor of Thor: The Dark World and Game of Thrones fame is directing.
It is inevitably the script that is generating most curiosity, however, and this fifth instalment is written by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island, Alexander) and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry). Though official details remain shrouded in secrecy, Moviehole (and later, Empire) report that a mysterious but informed source confirmed some details – the biggest of which, if accurate, is pretty interesting.
Allegedly, the script introduces a new story while paying tribute to Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day – thus effectively reviving the franchise from the ground up. The plot device is apparently comparable to that used in Back To The Future II, where characters in the new story are able to directly interact with events in the previous films. If this is, in fact, the case, and it is done well, then Terminator: Genesis may not be as desperate a prospect as it might have first seemed.
Principal photography for Terminator: Genesis is due to begin next month, with a release date scheduled for July 1st, 2015. For those that keep count, that’s a full 31 years after the T-800 first arrived on the big screen in his ‘time displacement sphere.’ Will he bring his own boots this time? Stay tuned for updates.