A recent appearance in ensemble in the jungle big bang flick The Expendables went a long way to signaling to the Hollywood hills that Arnie was on his way back, and would be looking for his comeback role. This is all preamble to a story Deadline is running about the apparent resurrection of the Terminator franchise, one which was run into the ground critically and commercially by McG’s Terminator: Salvation, a title which is now lumbered with an ironic weight given that the film which was supposed to the start of a new trilogy.
But nothing ever stays dead in Hollywood for long. Deadline have it that Justin Lin, the director Universal brought in to direct three of the rubber burning pentalogy Fast and Furious franchise, is being lined up to take on a new Terminator series for the studio. You’ll of course remember that McG had planned to make more Terminator films and even while standing in the burning wreckage of his 2009 film was adamant that he would return to the post apocalyptic world of the future.
Whether the Terminator series has the legs to carry on after the failure of the last film isn’t clear – but a ready made franchise is seemingly always more attractive than an original idea so there’s a good chance that if Lin and Universal are interested then it’ll happen one way or another. Schwarzenegger’s acting return merely flames the dying fire of a once great movie series.
So will is be P-45 to T-800 for Arnie? Probably not. Terminators don’t age.
