The “Terminator” franchise. Man, just thinking about that series now makes us wince.
And surely Warner Bros., Christian Bale and certainly McG probably would like to forget it ever happened.
It did gross a very handsome $372 million worldwide, but its modest budget projections were $200 million and that’s without the massive print and advertising campaigns, plus the film only grossed $125 million domestically. Critically, the series was obviously roasted. “Terminator Salvation” was supposed to reboot the series and start all over again, but at this point, we would be hard pressed to believe a fifth ‘Terminator’ film would happen with Bale, McG, Anton Yelchin and the new cast that was supposed to take this story forward.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, things got worse. Halcyon, the owners of the franchise, got sued by their own “Terminator Salvation” producing partners for fraud and breach of contract, among other allegations. Halcyon eventually went belly up and filed for bankruptcy and then had auction off the rights to the Terminator franchise, which lead people like Joss Whedon to mockingly bid $10,000 for the series.
Essentially, the series was tainted goods. Even though Halcyon originally bought the rights for a pretty measly $25 million, it didn’t seem that anyone was very interested until now.
According to Deadline Hollywood, those rights in the bankruptcy sale have been sold off to Liongsate which makes sense because similar-sized independents like Summit Entertainment and Media Rights Capital were once said to be circling it.
What does this mean? Well, Lionsgate is generally known for pumping out a lot of schlock (see the excruciating cash-grab “Saw” series which is on their 6th film and apparently going on a 7th). Yes, they also put out some prestige pictures, “Brothers” and “Precious” are recent examples, but more often than not it’s things like “Kick-Ass” or a lame-duck looking Nicolas Cage film like, “Season Of The Witch.”
So does this mean Lionsgate will turn the “Terminator” series into a cheap, sci-fi series they can run into the ground with installments that run into double digits? Who knows, but good luck to them as this series really is damaged goods. They’ll either need to hire quality talent or simply just aim it towards their “Saw” audience and be done with it. We’re hoping the latter, so it’s something we can just cross off our list to keep tabs on.