Terminator Sequels Already Slated For 2017 And 2018
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We’re getting a new Terminator movie next year, in the form of the terribly titled Terminator: Genisys (I can’t look at that without getting annoyed). And though we’re still more than ten months away from seeing that particular film, Paramount Pictures has already announced and scheduled two additional entries into the franchise.
Genisys is slated to drop on July 1, 2015, and now the sixth and seventh movies in the Terminator family, respectively, are scheduled to open on May 19, 2017 and June 29, 2018. Right now there’s nothing more specific than that—except that the studio is calling them Terminator 3 and Terminator 3, which will likely change—but you should steel yourself now for four years full of killer robots from the future.
Thor: The Dark World director Alan Taylor is helming Genisys, which brings franchise stalwart, and the former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the fold. After wrapping up his political career (unless Demolition Man’s prediction that he becomes president comes to pass), he’s tried to revamp his movie career. And while some of them have been decently fun—notably Sabotage and The Last Stand—none of them have been particular hits, and his most recent, The Expendables 3 was an absolute flop. Hopefully this will return him to the pantheon of legitimate movie stars.
Genisys also stars Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones), Jason Clarke (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), Jai Courtney (Divergent), Matt Smith (Doctor Who), Lee Byung-hun (G.I. Joe), and J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man). Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry) handled the scripting duties.
The fact that Paramount has already given the go ahead to two more movies shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. We’ve known that Genisys is intended to be the start of a new trilogy, and while the last two movies, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation, weren’t great, they still made decent scratch at the box office. If this follows suit, based on name recognition alone, they’ll want to cash in as quickly as possible. But the way they films are scheduled, if this is a bomb, the studio can easily back off without losing much.
Genisys is supposedly going to link to the earlier movies, specifically revisiting key moments from James Cameron’s 1984 Terminator and the follow up Terminator: Judgment Day. Taking that in hand, these new films are reportedly planned to be a more or less standalone trilogy, a kind of soft reboot of the franchise.
As far as scheduling competition goes, there’s not a lot in their way at the moment. The 2017 spot is free and clear, and though Marvel has one of their untitled upcoming projects scheduled, the 2018 slot falls into a similar category. Now all that remains to be done is for them to make good movies that we want to see and we can start getting excited about these.
