TERMINATOR: SALVATION, TERMINATOR: GENISYS, and TERMINATOR: DARK FATE were all supposed to be the first installments in a new trilogy of TERMINATOR films. Each one of them failed, and the stories they were supposed to lead to were scrapped. It remains to be seen what the future holds for the TERMINATOR franchise now, but during an interview on the Production Meeting Podcast GENISYS co-writer Patrick Lussier (who has also directed such films as DRIVE ANGRY, MY BLOOD VALENTINE 3D, and TRICK) took a moment to think back on what could have been if GENISYS had gone over better with viewers
While TERMINATOR: GENISYS (watch it HERE) time traveled back to 1984 and altered the events of the original TERMINATOR film, Lussier said that the sequels would have taken the franchise into fresher territory.
They were introducing new characters. They dealt more with the future and where Skynet comes from and what that sort of time loop is. You know, the Matt Smith character. It became much more of a focus, so they were probably a little trippier and stood away from T2 a little more. Started having their own identity. There’s sort of an interesting escaping the fatalistic part of it, how it opened was very cool…"
Lussier and Laeta Kalogridis had written two drafts of the direct sequel to GENISYS and had an outline in place for the third film in their trilogy. These sequels would have
answered all the questions that were presented in GENISYS and brought it back around and closed it all off."
Those sequels are never going to happen, but Lussier seems to have a bit of hope that TERMINATOR fans might someday have a chance to see what he and Kalogridis had planned.
Who knows? Maybe one day they'll release it as a comic or something."
Jason Clarke, who played John Connor in GENISYS, previously told Collider that the second film
was going to be about John's journey after he was taken by Skynet… like going down to what he became; half machine, half man. That's where the second one was going to start, and that’s about all I knew."
The TERMINATOR franchise pretty much ends with TERMINATOR 2 as far as I'm concerned, so I was never hyped to see any of the planned trilogies play out. Still, it would be interesting to get a glimpse at what the scrapped sequels to SALVATION, GENISYS, and DARK FATE would have been like.