Man, just when you thought a hedge fund company buying the rights to the “Terminator” franchise and director McG seemingly losing his first-look rights at directing whatever version becomes “Terminator 5” meant the series was dead for the next few years, along comes new news.
Apparently, William Wisher, the c0-writer behind “Terminator” (uncredited) and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (shared with James Cameron) has written a detailed 24-page treatment for “Terminator 5,” and a 4-page concept outline for “Terminator 6” that Deadline Hollywood has read.
While he doesn’t reveal plot details he says, “he turns the story back to the core characters and time travel storyline of the first two films that Wisher crafted with Cameron.”
This coupled with the fact that the L.A. Times recently said that despite the ugliness over the Terminator rights in the recent auction that, “Sony and Lions Gate have been given an exclusive window by Pacificor to negotiate to produce and distribute the next ‘Terminator’ movie,” maybe we’re not that far away from a sequel after all.
Mmm, possibly. As Deadline says, it remains to be seen if Sony or Lionsgate would even engage Wisher’s treatments, but the DH writer Mike Fleming clearly sounds enthusiastic about it and even dubs himself a “Terminator fanboy” (and in many instances it seems like he’s trying to help get this off the ground with his support).
Here’s some details:
Wisher’s 2-picture construct takes place in a post-apocalyptic battleground, and factors in an element of time travel that allows for Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese to interact beyond their single fateful meeting when he traveled back in time to protect her in the original film. Wisher has created a role for Arnold Schwarzenegger that is as surprising as his shift from villain in the first film, to John Connor’s bodyguard in the second. Schwarzenegger wouldn’t be needed until the final film, which wouldn’t shoot until after he ends his term as California Governor. And who wouldn’t want to see Linda Hamilton back in aerobic top fitness form as Sarah Connor? There are several new villains, and plenty of firepower. For instance, a swarm of “Night Crawlers,” 4 1/2-foot tall border sentries that are set like mines to spring up out of the ground and ambush rebel fighters with 10 MM pistols built into their wrists, and fingers and feet that are razor sharp. Also fresh off the Skynet assembly line are new shape-shifting cyborgs that can morph together in Transformers-like mode, and are more lethal than anything we’ve seen in previous Terminator installments.
Fanboys will surely be salivating all over this one. But it still sounds like early days and we’ll take a wait and see approach. It’s been a long time (“T2”) since we remotely cared about a “Terminator” film and we’re surprised the fairly sullied franchise hasn’t been abandoned wholesale, but where there’s a few million dollars to be made will, there’s a way.