Terminator in 2009: I'll Be Back!

by jordan | October 10, 2007 at 05:55 am | 514 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Inevitable, really... a second Terminator trilogy. This new round of robot-on-robot action will be set in the future, though, and Arnold Schwartzenegger, whose monosyllabic cyborg is a pop-culture icon (and the best thing ever to happen to Gargoyles sunglasses), will not be playing the lead.

Shooting will begin in 2008 on Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which promises to "reinvent the cyborg saga with a storyline to be told over a three-pic span".

Production company Halcyon is keen to stress that the movie will indeed be a "reinvention", as executive producer Moritz Borman told Variety: "The third film was really the conclusion of what happened in the 'now'. You will find the most-loved characters, but the intention here is to present a fresh new world and have this be the first of a trilogy."

Halcyon co-CEO Derek Anderson teased: "This is set in the future, in a full-scale war between Skynet and humankind."

The producers said that the new film will carry the size and scale of "Terminator 3," and will have an event-sized budget. It will likely be less than the $200 million pricetag of "Terminator 3," which was saddled with extravagant costs that included above the line payouts, rights payments and heavy fees incurred through a complex financial structure.

At the risk of typecasting, I recommend Peter Weller as the titular cyborg this time around.