The idea of James Cameron returning to produce Terminator: Dark Fate, as well as the return of original Terminator stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, seemed to be the perfect way to continue the story after some lacklustre sequels. However, it was not the case and Terminator: Dark Fate became one of the biggest box office disasters of all time with a terminating $123 million loss. While discussing a number of topics with Deadline, James Cameron owned up to being a big part of the reason for the movie’s disappointing box office. He explained:

“I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold. Tim didn’t want Arnold but I said, look, I don’t want that. Arnold and I have been friends for 40 years and I could hear it, and it would go like this: “Jim, I can’t believe you’re making a Terminator movie without me. It just didn’t mean that much to me to do it, but I said, if you guys could see your way clear to bringing Arnold back and then, you know, I’d be happy to be involved.”

And then Tim wanted Linda. I think what happened is I think the movie could have survived having Linda in it, I think it could have survived having Arnold in it, but when you put Linda and Arnold in it and then, you know, she’s 60 something, he’s 70 something, all of a sudden it wasn’t your Terminator movie, it wasn’t even your dad’s Terminator movie, it was your granddad’s Terminator movie. And we didn’t see that. We loved it, we thought it was cool, you know, that we were making this sort of direct sequel to a movie that came out in 1991. And young movie-going audiences weren’t born. They wouldn’t even have been born for another 10 years.

So, it was just our own myopia. We kind of got a little high on our own supply and I think that’s the lesson there.”

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Did James Cameron’s Arnie Obsession Killed the Terminator Franchise?

     Paramount Pictures

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of those movies that defies normal convention. It ups the ante in every way possible, delivers one of the greatest movie sequels of all time and took every expectation and blew them up in a rain of fire. For that reason, Cameron’s masterpiece became an impossible one to successfully follow up even though they would try again, and again, and again.

Just like his Avatar sequels, James Cameron didn’t just write down a story for one movie when he worked on Terminator: Dark Fate, but planned the film to be the first in a new Terminator trilogy. Of course, a movie with a near $200 million budget that only makes $261 million at the box office is never going to get a sequel green-lit, and that was the case with Terminator: Dark Fate. There are currently no plans being discussed for any further Terminator movies, mainly because the franchise has now hit a point where Arnold Schwarzenegger is the T-800, and a Terminator movie without him seems to be pointless, but he is also at an age where it no longer makes sense to cast him in the lead. For the immediate future, it looks like the Terminator franchise has been powered down, but that doesn’t mean someone will not attempt to reboot it somewhere down the line.