After a long career helming episodes of television shows, director Alan Taylor is getting serious about his big screen career. The director is currently working to finish Marvel Studio's Thor: The Dark World in time for the film's November 8th release date, but he has already nabbed his second major blockbuster project. Variety reports that Taylor has been tapped to direct the Terminator reboot that is set to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger and is being produced by Skydance Productions, Paramount Pictures and Annapurna Pictures.
What makes this news surprising is the fact that for the longest time it was assumed that Fast and Furious 6 director Justin Lin would end up helming the fifth installment of the sci-fi franchise. Lin was first connected with the project all the way back in 2011, and while he wound up leaving the movie in September of that same year it was said that the door was being kept open for him to return. While Lin is attached to numerous projects, he has not yet said what his next film will be - which led some think that he was leaving a hole in his schedule for Terminator. Obviously that isn't the case.
The three aforementioned studios officially announced the Terminator reboot back in late June, setting it for a June 26, 2015 release date. Screenwriters Patrick Lussier and Laeta Kalogridis are writing the script, but it has not yet been said what the movie will actually be about.
Taylor made his debut in 1995 directing the film Palookaville, but since then has almost exclusively stuck to the small screen. He's directed many episodes of some of the best series on television in the last 17 years, including Oz, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Mad Men and Game of Thrones. Thor: The Dark World is by far the most high-profile feature that Taylor has helmed, and one can guess that Skydance, Paramount and Annapurna have liked what they've seen.
With a June 2015 release date, that means production on Terminator will likely start up in the first few months of next year, around the same time as Joss Whedon's The Avengers: Age of Ultron, J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII, and Zack Snyder's Superman/Batman movie (have we mentioned that the summer of 2015 is going to be awesome?) Now that the film has a director and screenwriters that means its nearly time for the casting process to start.
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