Now that the bidding war is over, the dust has cleared and the hedge fund Pacificor owns the rights to the Terminator franchise, it's time to start thinking about the future.
It's going to be a tough task. Hardcore fans feel that last two installments of the film did not carry their weight compared to the work done James Cameron and his team on Terminator and Terminator 2.Sadly, Cameron is more than likely not going to have anything to do with these new films, which kind of sucks given that the franchise would lend itself beautifully to his new 3D movie making process. But there is a silver lining to this liquid mercury cloud. Cameron’s writing partner on the first two films, William Wisher, has scripted a detailed 24-page treatment for Terminator 5, and a 4-page concept outline for Terminator 6. Wisher seems to be a pretty loyal friend and work partner--he walked away from Terminator: Salvation because his buddy Cameron had nothing to do with it.
Mike Fleming of Deadline.com apparently had the chance to the read these treatments. He writes, "As a Terminator fanboy myself, I think Wisher has done a terrific job with a plot that accepts the storylines from Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and McG’s Terminator: Salvation. Most interestingly, he turns the story back to the core characters and time travel storyline of the first two films that Wisher crafted with Cameron."
Fleming can't give away too much (it's not even certain that the films would get made, much less that the studio would hire him to write or use his ideas) but luckily Fleming received permission to disclose some high points.
"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."
There are even several new villains and plenty of firepower, including a swarm of "Night Crawlers" and 4 1/2-foot tall border sentries that are set like mines to spring up out of the ground and ambush rebel fighters. Also fresh off the Skynet assembly line are new shape-shifting cyborgs that can morph together in Transformers-like mode, and are more deadly (and cool) than anything we’ve seen in previous films.
Fleming concludes, "Wisher presents a satisfying conclusion to what by then would be a 6-picture struggle between Skynet’s machines and John and Sarah Connor to preserve a future that allows mankind to prevail over the machines."
I would definitely see these movies. I already wasted my money on the last two Terminator films, and I am owed a good movie out of these clowns already.
