James Cameron planning new Terminator trilogy

Ben Arnold

·Contributor

26 July 2017 at 4:25 am

Cameron... plotting three new Terminator movies - Credit: AP — Cameron… plotting three new Terminator movies – Credit: AP

James Cameron isn’t just thinking about making one new Terminator movie. He’s thinking about making three.

Earlier this year, it emerged that the rights to the franchise return to the ‘Avatar’ director in 2019, and that he’d been talking to ‘Deadpool’ helmsman Tim Miller about a new movie.

But it appears that just one movie isn’t the plan.

Speaking to The Playlist, he said: “I am in discussions with (producer) David Ellison, who is the current rights holder globally for the Terminator franchise and the rights in the US market revert to me under US copyright law in a year and a half so he and I are talking about what we can do.

“Right now we are leaning toward doing a three-film arc and reinventing it.”

Cameron made the 1984 original, and then the blockbusting sequel in 1991, but he’s not had much to say for the movies since, those suffixed ‘Rise of the Machines’, ‘Salvation’ and ‘Genisys’.

“I think it’s fairly widely known that I don’t have a lot of respect for the films that were made later,” he added.

“I was supportive at the time in each case for Arnold’s sake because he is a close friend. He has been a mate of mine since 33 years ago so I was always supportive and never too negative.

“But they didn’t work for me for various reasons.”

How much involvement Cameron would have in three new movies is open to debate, however.

For the past decade – and like the one to come – the director has been immersed in the world of ‘Avatar’, the first sequel due out in 2020, followed by further movies in 2021, 2024, and 2025, all of which are being filmed back to back.