It’s no secret that the Terminator franchise has had a rough time of it for quite a while. Although 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate earned better critical reception than Salvation and Genisys, it still didn’t perform well enough at the box office to warrant moving forward with the original trilogy plan. The film series has hung in limbo since then, though James Cameron, who co-created Terminator with Gale Ann Hurd, is still developing a new project for the franchise. However, this work has been “difficult” for him due to a specific reason.
Cameron is making the press rounds for Avatar: Fire and Ash, one of the final 2025 movie releases, and during an interview with io9, he spent some time talking about where things stand with the future of Terminator. Here’s what he had to say when the outlet asked him for an update:
I’ll have some time to write and to consider my next projects and the order in which I do them and so on once we’re done with the marketing on this in a month or so. I’ve got a stack of notes this thick [holds fingers about three inches apart], which is how I start all my scripts, on what I want to do with a new Terminator film. I’m going to pour myself into that as a writer.
Although James Cameron technically made his feature directorial debut with Piranha II: The Spawning, he’s said before that he considers The Terminator to be his first proper movie. So this franchise holds a particularly special place in his heart, and he returned in to helm 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day. After Genisys failed to impress, the property rights reverted to Cameron, leading to him working on Dark Fate as a producer alongside director Tim Miller. While it’d be great to see Cameron direct a third Terminator movie, I am glad he’ll at least pen this project’s script.
That doesn’t mean coming up with a new Terminator story is coming easy to him, though. James Cameron went on to say that the technological advancements made since The Terminator’s release make it more challenging to craft an effective science fiction narrative in this particular universe. As he explained:
It’s difficult. I have to tell you. Science fiction has caught up and is actually overwhelming us at this point. We’re living in a science fiction world, and we’re literally having to deal with problems that in the past only existed in science fiction books and movies. Now we’re living it for real. I’ll never be as prescient as I was back in 1984 of imagining this one because I don’t think anybody knows what’s going to be happening a year or two years from now. But I at least want to future-proof myself by being a couple years out.
Considering that the first two Terminator movies remain the best in the franchise, I’m confident that James Cameron will figure out a way to make this mystery Terminator project a compelling story. Perhaps him having a more direct hand in another Terminator movie or TV show will be just the thing to turn this franchise’s fortune around. The question is, how far off are we from Cameron writing this script?
That’s hard to say given his busy schedule and other projects that have caught his interest. In addition to Avatar 4 and 5 already being written and primed to be filmed at some point, he intends to adapt Charles R. Pellegrino’s books The Last Train from Hiroshima and Ghosts of Hiroshima into one all-encompassing movie. Cameron is also writing the screenplay for a film adaptation of the Joe Abercrombie book The Devils.
So it may be a while until we see what James Cameron has cooked up for the Terminator franchise next. However, I do recommend streaming the 2024 anime series Terminator Zero if you have a Netflix subscription, as it’s a worthy addition to this sci-fi universe. Otherwise, catch Avatar: Fire and Ash in theaters starting December 19.