Remember back in 2014 when James Cameron said he was planning to do a 3D re-release of TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY? How about in 2015 when it was announced it would be coming out in August 2016 to mark the film’s 25th anniversary? Yeah, well, August is practically over and we are no closer to seeing that re-release than we are the AVATAR sequels.
Still, that doesn’t mean the 3D conversion is off the table, as a poster for the re-release just dropped on the Terminator 2 Facebook page with a caption hinting at a release some point in 2017:
“August 29th 1997: The day Skynet first became self aware.
August 29th 2016: the day you first saw the brand new poster for Terminator 2 in 3D. Coming to theaters in 2017.”
Take a look at a young(er) Schwarzenegger below!
Back in June 2014 Cameron spoke to why he would not be converting the first TERMINATOR movie, but would convert the sequel:
"You could upgrade it to 3D but it’s still pretty gritty, available light photography, low budget filmmaking. We’d spend more converting it to 3D than we spent on the movie. That feels a little imbalanced to me."
“[TERMINATOR 2] has a kind of timeless appeal. If there was someone who was interested in doing that, and we could make a good case for the business model like, perhaps let’s say, it’s never been on screens in China which in the next few years is about to become the biggest market for films worldwide. That alone might justify the cost of a conversion which might be 6 or 7 million dollars. And then a 3D re-release might attract some eyeballs in North American and Europe and then the Chinese release, which would be the first release on the big screen, might pay for it.”
Cameron's hope that people in China would turn out to see the re-release makes more sense today than in 2014, as last year's TERMINATOR: GENISYS made $112 million over there, compared to $89 million here. As someone who is indifferent to 3D I can say that I would probably pay to see this re-release in theaters just out of curiosity, and to see the movie in a theater. However, I can imagine die-hard fans not wanting to pay the surcharge for something many consider unnecessary like 3D, maybe preferring to put that money towards a 2D IMAX showing, like with the re-release of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 2012. Still though, it would be badass to see the flick on the big screen, and at the very least, you could pretend those 3D glasses make you look like Arnold riding that sweet motorcycle.