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]

Read the rest of this entry »

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!”

Look, I like Terminator 2 as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure that means I want to see a flabby, 63-year-old robot in a movie from the guy who directed Fast Five and Annapolis (is it just me or is it bizarre that James Franco was in that?  no joke, I could’ve sworn it was C-Tates). Nonetheless, a new Terminator movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger ( which was first announced a few days ago) is just the kind of idea that will steamroll the hundreds of entirely warranted reservations, solely on the basis that it sounds like it should be a big deal.  That’s just how spectacle works.  The latest news on the project, by way of LatinoReview, is that it will be called “Terminator 2012″, and it could reunite the “entire original cast”.

Or should I say “Terminator 2012” which is the title the pitch is going under right now. It involves time travel back to the present day, and – the exciting and mind-bending part of it all – is that it has the “entire original cast” attached to it, not just Arnie. I don’t know what “entire original cast” means, but it’s safe to assume that AT LEAST means Linda Hamilton is coming back to re-establish herself as the face of Sarah Connor. At best, we somehow get Michael Biehn as some sort of old Kyle Reese…

[UPDATE: Biehn says he hasn't heard anything about it, so take that for what you will.]

Oooh, will they bring back Moon Bloodgood, or Kristanna Loken??? Or maybe even Nick Stahl???? I don’t want to get my hopes up! I don’t know what “original” cast means exactly either, but I can only hope it’s code for… EDDIE F*CKING FURLONG!

Typical child actor

[Thanks for the Arnold pic, Pauly, you Mexican adonis you]

No, you did not misread that headline.  Arnold Schwarzenegger is attached to star in a Terminator sequel currently being shopped around town.  Presumably, it will take place 50 years after Terminator Salvation, when the machines send back a flabby, depressing shell of their previous Terminator to bankrupt the humans’ economy. (I love me some Arnold, and it hurt me to say that, but come on). Oh, and 5 Fast 5 Furious‘s Justin Lin is set to direct.  Oof. And we thought McG was bad.

Schwarzenegger is attached to star in a rights package that CAA is shopping today that will revive The Terminator. I’m told that already, Universal, Sony and Lionsgate, and CBS Films are looking hard at the package.

Some might even say that they’re staring, gaping, virtually salivating over the Schwarzenegger package, ogling it with imaginary goggles like a Brazilian stripper.

This is the first real activity on the Terminator project since February 2010, when the property emerged from a bankruptcy auction and into the possession of Pacificor, a Santa Barbara-based hedge fund, who posted a bid of $29.5 million, with the promise that additional multimillion-dollar payments for each film would go to Halcyon, the company that made Terminator Salvation. Halcyon wanted to make several films but ran out of money.

I wrote back in February that Universal quietly was trying to arrange for Justin Lin to be helmer of the project. At the time, some turned up their noses. Given the strong international grosses being racked up by Fast Five and the expectations for a strong domestic opening this Friday, Lin has a lot of heat. [Deadline]

The one thing I’ve ever seen Justin Lin do that wasn’t terrible (and don’t say Better Luck Tomorrow, that was basically a direct-to-DVD 50 Cent movie with Asians in it) was the Modern Warfare episode of Community (which, to be fair, was awesome). Terminator always demanded a bit of realism, whereas 5 Fast 5 Furious is more like pro wrestling with cars, where it’s constantly rubbing its complete lack of believability in your face to prove just how much you’ll put up with to see sweaty men yell at each other.