UPDATE: Looks like it’s more or less official that Wan is taking the job.

Just because Justin Lin bowed out of the Fast and Furious franchise after he finished directing the sixth installment, which opens next month, that’s not going to keep Universal from making 7 Fast 7 Furious. As Vin Diesel put it, “the fans’ desire for the continuation is powerful.” And anyway, it doesn’t take Orson Hitchcock to shoot cars going fast and buff guys yelling. Now, the word is, Universal wants to bring on James Wan, best known for directing the first Saw, as Lin’s replacement. He seems like a perfect choice on account of he’s also an Asian guy who directs dumb movies.

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures has begun negotiations with James Wan to direct the seventh installment of the studio’s mega-buck franchise The Fast And The Furious. I expect a deal to be made probably before the week is out.
Universal Pictures has had plenty of time to consider who’ll take over the race car franchise, and recently they have been working from a very short list. Among the directors they’ve spoken to are Baltazar Kormakur, who helmed Contraband, The Deep and the upcoming 2 Guns with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg (I don’t think Kormakur is available); Kick-Ass 2 helmer Jeff Wadlow; and The Karate Kid helmer Harold Zwart, whose next is The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones. Wan, who helmed the first installment of Saw, more recently directed the horror smash hit Insidious, and has The Conjuring upcoming.
Wan has gotten the endorsement of Lin. [Deadline]

The next step for Wan is going through the lengthy hazing process that all Fast/Furious directors must face. It starts with a trip to Tyrese’s house, where you have to nod thoughtfully as he explains his many theories on women, and listen patiently as he plays you some tracks off his new album, eyes closed, head bopping earnestly.

Possible Tagline: “All roads lead to thi7.”

We hadn’t heard anything about the Terminator franchise in a while, but if you think people forgot about it, you’re wrong (IDIOT), because today Deadline reports that Megan Ellison has enlisted her brother David to help produce a new one. If you don’t know who Megan Ellison is, you should, because she’s basically my hero. Movies that the 26-year-old daughter of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison has thus far helped finance include: Zero Dark Thirty, The Master, Killing Them Softly, Lawless, Spring Breakers, True Grit, and upcoming projects from Spike Jonze and David O. Russell. Basically, if you hear of a movie aimed at adult film-lovers and not at dumb children in the last few years, there’s a 50/50 chance Megan Ellison had something to do with it. Her older brother David is also in the movie business, leaning more toward blockbusters, working on films such as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Jack Reacher, Star Trek Into The Darkness, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and now Deadline reports that they’ll be teaming up for a new Terminator movie. Which sounds like a pretty logical plan to me, but then what do I know, I’m just a guy balls deep in a dead badger.

Nearly 18 months after Megan Ellison pledged over $20 million for the rights to finish The Terminator‘s storyline with a new series of films, she has finally closed the complicated rights deal with Pacificorp. Other than the fact no progress has been made all this time on a script, the surprise here is Ellison has enlisted her brother, David Ellison, to be her financial and creative partner.

New copyright laws allow for North American rights to The Terminator to revert back to creator James Cameron in 2019 (that happens after 35 years, and The Terminator was 1984). While that law hasn’t been tested in the courts, no major film company would want to move forward on a project with a potentially catastrophic rights crisis looming. So the original pricey deal — made with the expectations there would be three films — was scaled down because the reality is they might only get to make two installments.

The project has been moving in fits and starts, and most likely that has been due to the slow pace of the rights deal. At one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger had been attached, and so was Fast & Furious helmer Justin Lin. Because Ellison expected to put the first of two pictures in production in late 2012, Lin dropped out.

I’m not sure the Terminator franchise still has stories that are screaming to be told, but it’s a positive development to hear that Megan Ellison is involved and Justin Lin isn’t. Lin previously directed three Fast/Furious movies, which, even if you like them, are about as deep as pro wrestling, and Terminator is a franchise that requires a director with a bit of a brain. And if they are going to make another Terminator movie, I’d just as soon it not suck big farts. But hey, that’s just me, a guy who f*cks dead animals.

It seems like a lifetime ago that we were talking a fifth Terminator movie. Benevolent heiress financier Megan Ellison bought the rights last May with a plan for Justin Lin (Fast, Furious) to direct and Arnold Schwarzenegger to return to star. Then Arnold raw-dogged a few Mexican maids, Justin Lin signed up for two more Fast/Furious movies, and the project went out the window faster than a Mexican’s panties at Schwarzenegger’s house.

Well good news, because now Megan Ellison says that the film which might not ever happen will be rated R. Unlike the last one. Which had McG directing.

@terminatorfans We can’t really tell you guys anything about Terminator BUT it will be an R rated film as God and James Cameron intended. [MeganEllison'sTwitter]

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I don't even know dude, I was tired.

Just a month ago, indie financier/heiress Megan Ellison acquired the rights to the Terminator franchise with plans to produce a new film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger from Fast Five director Justin Lin. At the time, Deadline estimated she paid as much as $20 million for it.  Of course, that was before we found out Arnold had been indiscriminately jizzing on poor people for more than a decade. His subsequent movie hiatus puts the project in a bit of a bind, considering Arnold was the only thing people were even remotely interested in, to the point they were willing to consider the possibility that Skynet was producing old, flabby cyborgs.  But Megan Ellison’s already into this thing for 20 large, so it would seem a movie has to happen. WhatsPlaying’s “HollywoodInsider” thinks they know what that might look like (and it’s not good):

While Schwarzenegger may not be yet ready to return to film, considering recent events, and has temporarily put his Terminator reprise on hold, Ellison and are still keen to get going on the movie. What may happen, I’m told, is the creative crew might lessen Schwarzenegger’s screentime in this movie, so it’s less work and less of a commitment for him and thus, it’ll be easier to talk the big guy into doing something this year.

From the sounds of things, the big guy does have a fairly substantial role in the new story – which is said to involve that original timeline being torn, again – but this Terminator would mostly be anchored by a new, younger male lead (Paul Walker’s name keeps coming up – could he possibly be Lin’s pick for Kyle Reese?). Oh, and I think that’s where the rumors of the ‘original cast returning’ come into play – though it’s not so much the original cast as it is ‘the original characters’ from the original movie. Geddit? Like J.J’s Star Trek. [WhatsPlaying]

If Paul Walker’s name keeps coming up, I can only hope the context is “Who’s the worst actor in Hollywood?  Because we should totally cast the opposite of that guy.”  Did Justin Lin lose a bet with Paul Walker’s family or something?  This whole project just went from mission impossible to mission in frickin sanity.

Arnold in The Expendables 3

Megan Ellison, 25-year-old daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has quickly become known as some kind of indie movie savior, stepping in to finance films movie dorks (read: people like me) want to see, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie about Scientology, an untitled collaboration between Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, a Bin Laden project from Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow, and just yesterday, Martin McDonagh’s incredible sounding follow up to In Bruges, starring Rourke, Rockwell, Walken, and Farrell, just to name a few.  Now it seems she’s switching gears, acquiring the rights to a project that actually sounds pretty horrible, the next installment of Terminator, which has the Fast Five director attached to direct.

Megan Ellison has won an auction for the rights to make at least two more installments of The Terminator franchise, with Fast Five‘s Justin Lin attached to direct and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to star. The deal came down to Ellison’s Annapurna Films and Lionsgate, which seemed to have had the project sewn up until she came forward with a dramatic bid. The auction at the time was for a guarantee for at least half of the $29.5 million paid by hedge fund Pacificor to pull the franchise out of bankruptcy. Unclear what the winning amount was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit the $20 million mark. CAA brokered the deal. [Deadline]

There are two ways to look at this (not including the too-good-to-be-true way, that Ellison bought the franchise just so she could take it out behind the barn and shoot it). One being that Megan Ellison’s company needs a project that’s a guaranteed money maker to help pay for the other riskier, indie stuff (much the way I used prostitution to finance my rap career).  The other being that with a more independent financier like Ellison, this project might actually have a chance of being good (and of course, it’s possible that it’s a combination of the two).  But then, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions about someone whose name we only first heard a few months ago.  Politics, movie financing, and prostitution are the only industries where things are so bad that it’s normal to say, “Oh God, please hire someone who’s never done this before!”