Last year, Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day director James Cameron indicated that he was developing a mysterious a new project set in the Terminator universe.
That was all we had to go on (and still is, pretty much) at the time, but the legendary filmmaker has now confirmed that he is still working on the script for a new movie - and that he has hit a bit of a roadblock.
"I've been tasked with writing a new Terminator story," he tells CNN. "I've been unable to get [very far] on that... I don't know what to say that won't be overtaken by real events. We are living in a science fiction age right now."
When the first Terminator came out in the '80s, the movie's premise did seem a lot more far-fetched than it does today, and the advent of AI has resulted in a very real fear that the technology could become too advanced. We're not sure how many people would be too concerned that it might ultimately become self-aware and we could have a Skynet situation on our hands, but we take Cameron's point.
Despite decent reviews, the last movie, Dark Fate, was the latest instalment in the franchise to underperform at the box office, and it was generally assumed that it'd be a very long time before we see the war against the machines continue on the big screen.
However, in a 2024 interview, Cameron hinted that the franchise would continue with a new live-action project while speaking to THR about the Netflix animated series, Terminator Zero.
"It looks interesting. My relationship to that is very much like The Sarah Connor Chronicles — other people spinning stories in a world I set in motion is interesting to me. What’s their takeaway? What intrigued them about it? Where are they going with it? It looks like they’re going back to the root cause of Judgment Day — the nuclear war — and whether that’s an ultimate timeline. I’d be curious to see what they’ve come up with. I’m working on my own Terminator stuff right now. It’s got nothing to do with that. Like with The Sarah Connor Chronicles, they occasionally touched on things I had been playing with completely independently. So there’s some curiosity there. It’s not a burning curiosity, but, obviously, it’d be nice to see it succeed."
"It’s totally classified," he added when asked for more details. "I don’t want to have to send out a potentially dangerous robotic agent if you were to talk about it, even retroactively."
There's been some speculation that Cameron might decide to direct this new Terminator film himself, but we know that he intends to take the helm of at least one more Avatar movie after the upcoming Fire and Ash, and may not be free to move on to another project for quite some time.
Would you like to see another Terminator movie, or do you think the franchise should be left alone at this stage?