The McG-directed Terminator 4 – which may or may not still be titled Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins – is set to open May 22, 2009 with Christian Bale in the lead role (of John Connor).  Today the BBC reports that Bale is signed on for THREE Terminator movies.  Victor Kubicek of Halcyon says Bale read the script, loved it, and signed on for three right away.  Based on the source article alone, I can neither confirm nor deny that Kubicek’s pants were on fire at the time.

"We can’t talk about the story points at all," said Kubicek, adding the project was being kept strictly under wraps.  "Not everyone gets to see the script. They only see the part of the script that’s relevant to the job they’re doing."

Obviously.  No way Bale would’ve agreed to this if he knew it was just going to be six hours of him begging Kyle Reese to go back in time and bang his mom. 

"We’re both huge Terminator fans and we’re just approaching it from the point of view of what we’d like to see," said [Kubicek's business partner Derek] Anderson.  "Any time we’re feeling pressure we just take a step back and say, as fans, ‘what would we like to see?’"  [BBC]

And as "huge fans" they apparently decided the Charlie’s Angels guy was the best director for the project.  It’s kind of like how the only thing O.J. was guilty of was loving that fucking bitch so much.   -Thanks to Bryce for the tip

The McG-helmed, Christian Bale starring Terminator 4 begins production today, and Anne Thompson at the Halcyon Company says that, unlike its predecessors, T4 will be shooting for a PG-13 rating.  It seems wise, considering no one over 17 has ever enjoyed a McG movie.

Question marks in the headline can mean only one thing: it’s time to prognosticate! Will humans land on Mars?  Is purple the new pink? Would this monkey let me squeeze her tits for a banana?  No one knows for sure, and that means we’re free to speculate wildly! Yee haw!

Today’s rumor is that TERMINATOR 4 HAS BEEN CANCELLED.  It’s still very much a rumor, based on a tip to UGOMovie blog:

According to my source, a crew member was recently overheard discussing his newfound free schedule due to the production shutting down.

Last we heard of the fourth Terminator, which is/was to be directed by McG and star Christian Bale as John Connor, rumor was that they’d decided to call it Terminator: The Return of the Terminator.  The title, the idea, and pretty much everything else about this production has sounded too stupid to be true. Rumor or not, the possibility that it’ll be scrapped altogether is the first sensible thing I ever heard about it.

Putting Christian Bale in a McG movie is like trying to improve Eazy Cheeze by adding steak to the recipe.  Sure, the steak’s normally associated with higher quality meals, but an aerosol cheese product is a paradox – it’s the bottom of the barrel, and yet impossible to improve upon.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that Christian Bale is a big juicy hunk of meat.  Wait, what?

CHUD reported this like two weeks ago, and somehow neither I nor anybody else reported on it – so perhaps it’s bogus – but Terminator 4, which was once called Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, is now reportedly called Terminator: The Return of the Terminator.

I’m not saying I have sources on WB’s Burbank lot, but I do hear things.  And while there’s a lot of intentional disinformation leaking out of this production (sorry, but no Terminator Babies), I am 100% certain that the title is the approved-by-McG replacement. [Source]

Imagined McG staff meeting:

Hey, let’s call it "The Terminator Returns"! 
No way, not passive voice enough. 
Hmm… how about "The Return of the Terminator" then?
…I like it, but how will people know that it’s a movie about the terminator?  I mean, I tend to forget stuff that has three or four words in front of it. 
Okay okay, how about "Terminator: The Return of the Terminator". 
I like it!  It’s like, you know it’s about the terminator, but also that he’s returning.  Like, he’s been somewhere else, but now he’s back.  He’s fuckin back, man!  The Terminator is back!  But hey, what do those two little dots mean?

That’s right, McG, the other unemployed English majors and I thumb our collective nose at you.  WE THUMB OUR NOSE, SIR! 

Anton Yelchin of Charlie Bartlett is talks to play Kyle Reese in Terminator 4 (which used to be called Terminator: The Future Begins but is currently title-less).

Reese, of course, is John Connor’s friend from the future who travels back in time to bone his mom.  Awesome, uh, thanks bro.  Terminator 4 is, of course, the nail in the coffin of the Terminator franchise which is being directed by the guy who did Charlie’s Angels.

It’s nice that they’ve chosen someone who looks so tough and ruggedly masculine. I mean, I’m not saying I’d rape this guy if we were in prison, but you better believe I’d watch.