Paramount has announced a July 26, 2019 release date for the next film in the TERMINATOR franchise, which DEADPOOL's Tim Miller will be directing with James Cameron producing. It's not clear who will be receiving screenwriting credit on this particular film, but Miller, Cameron, and financier David Ellison of Skydance Media have assembled a writers room that includes David S. Goyer, Charles Eglee, Justin Rhodes, Ellison himself, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles creator Josh Friedman (Friedman also wrote one of the AVATAR sequels for Cameron), with Cameron stopping by once a week. These writers are putting their heads together not just to write this one new TERMINATOR film, but to plot out a whole new trilogy.
If you were a fan of the TERMINATOR sequels that Cameron wasn't involved with, brace yourself for disappointment: Cameron has confirmed that the new film / new trilogy will be ignoring everything except the original TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. As Cameron put it during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter,
This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. And we're pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our multi-verse."
The new film will be revamping and reinventing the franchise for the 21st century, addressing the advancements technology has made since the release of the previous films and the advancements that may be coming down the line in the next ten to thirty years. To hear Cameron talk about it, it almost seems like a race against time to get these movies out before artificial intelligence does start creating trouble in our world.
I look at what's happening now with the emergence of artificial general intelligence equal to or greater than humans', and you've got Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking and others saying that this could be really bad for the survival of the human race. What was science fiction in the '80s is now imminent. It's coming over the horizon at us. And there's been a resurgence of fear and concern about nuclear weapons and so on. So all of these apocalyptic elements are out there. The first two Terminator films that I did dealt with the angst around that and how we reconcile it for ourselves in a fantasy context. So I got excited about the idea of finding a story that made sense for now.
… Technology has always scared me, and it's always seduced me. People ask me: "Will the machines ever win against humanity?" I say: "Look around in any airport or restaurant and see how many people are on their phones. The machines have already won." It's just [that] they've won in a different way. We are co-evolving with our technology. We're merging. The technology is becoming a mirror to us as we start to build humanoid robots and as we start to seriously build AGI — general intelligence — that's our equal. Some of the top scientists in artificial intelligence say that's 10 to 30 years from now. We need to get the damn movies done before that actually happens! And when you talk to these guys, they remind me a lot of that excited optimism that nuclear scientists had in the '30s and '40s when they were thinking about how they could power the world. And taking zero responsibility for the idea that it would instantly be weaponized. The first manifestation of nuclear power on our planet was the destruction of two cities and hundreds of thousands of people. So the idea that it can't happen now is not the case. It can happen, and it may even happen."
Cameron's concern about the A.I. of the future is shared by Miller:
I can't imagine what a truly artificial intelligence will make of us. Jim's brought some experts in to talk to us, and it's really interesting to hear their perspective. Generally, they're scared as shit, which makes me scared."
While the films look ahead to a potential future, they will also be bringing back familiar faces from the past, with stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton set to return, Hamilton as a "seasoned warrior" version of Sarah Connor.
Cameron says,
I called her up, and I said: "Look, we could rest on our laurels. It's ours to lose, in a sense. We created this thing several decades ago. But, here's what can be really cool. You can come back and show everybody how it's done." Because in my mind, it hasn't been done a whole lot since the way she did it back in '91. … There are certainly plenty of 50-, 60-, 70-something guys out there that just keep cranking along doing action movies and killing bad guys left and right. But there isn't an example of that for women, and I think there should be."
The new film will also be addressing Schwarzenegger's advanced age, and it sounds like it will be doing so in a more meaningful way than the grey hair and "Pops" nickname he sported in TERMINATOR: GENISYS. Miller didn't want to give too much away, but said there will be an "interesting and fresh" approach to Schwarzenegger's cyborg character, who has been in action and operation for a while.
I haven’t talked to Arnold about this so I could get in trouble. But because he’s been in all the other movies — unlike Linda — I do think there needs to be a reason to be different here. I like my sci-fi grounded. I like my characters grounded. And what Jim said about the exterior aging while the interior remains the same — well, not the interior, as in the brain, as emotionally and intellectually he will have evolved. They’re learning machines. But that’s a way to make it different than it was."
While Schwarzenegger and Hamilton anchor the new film, they will also be passing the baton to a new star, a young woman who will be at the center of the new stories. That character has not been cast yet.
If you're interested in reading the full interview with Cameron and Miller, click over to The Hollywood Reporter. The TERMINATOR franchise has had a bumpy ride since T2, it's starting to feel rather tired, but it sounds like Cameron and Miller are passionate about reinvigorating it, so I look forward to seeing how the next movie turns out.