It's nothing but bad news for Terminator fans. After the mediocre performance of Terminator Salvation, the franchise went up for sale. Halcyon, the rightsholder, was headed for bankruptcy and in need of cash. Both Sony and Lionsgate were heavy bidders for the rights to the property, presumably with the goal of owning it and making something good. But now the rights to Terminator have been sold, and not to creative people with big ideas about how to get this thing back on track. Nope, they've sold it to a bunch of bankers. Here's how Deadline explains it:

Halcyon Holding Corp accepted the $29.5 million bid from, of all parties, the debtholder which pushed it into bankruptcy, Santa Barbara-based hedge fund Pacificor. (This is the same Pacificor whom Halcyon accused in a lawsuit of extortion, bribery, and fraud and demanded $30M in damages.)

UPDATE! Now that the Evil Bankers are in control, they are of course, looking for someone else to pay them. Word is that Lionsgate and Sony are now in negotiations with the Evil Bankers to jointly take control of the property for them, since Evil Bankers don't know a thing about film production.

Before the release of Terminator Salvation director McG spent a lot of time spouting ridiculous nonsense to promote his film. Some of it we bought into, some of it we didn't. In the bought it category falls his claim that Warner Bros. was forcing him to delete this incredible topless scene with the film's female lead Moon Bloodgood. Well now that deleted scene is available on the internet and... yeah... it's pretty awful.

The scene happens in the rain while Bloodgood is creepily watched by a pervs. You can't really see much and what you can see is, surprisingly, not that impressive. Sorry Moon, I just expected better. That must be a hellacious push-up bra you have on. The thing to remember here though is that, as usual, McG was exaggerating to make himself look edgier and more fan friendly than he actually is. Cutting this scene was a good decision. Watch it after the jump and see if you agree. more...

Terminator Salvation is an entertaining film, as long as you don’t think about it. The special effects are splashy the action is fast-paced and fun. Even the characters are, with the exception of Bale’s somewhat blank John Connor, interesting and well acted. Anton Yelchin in particular, who you may have noticed a couple of weeks ago as Chekov in Star Trek, really shines here as Kyle Reese. In fact, forget John Connor. They should have given us an entire movie focused on him. No the movie’s problems have nothing to do with anything that happened on set during the film’s making, they’re much deeper and more ingrained than that. It’s the script. It’s the entire premise on which the film is built that’s at fault and there’s really nothing the movie’s one-named director McG, even if he’d been allowed to deliver the R-rated movie this franchise deserved, could have done to fix that.

Since it’s the premise that’s the problem, there’s really no way to discuss this without minor spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t want it ruined for you, jump ship now. If you’re still here, then let’s get right to the heart of this problem.
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It's all over for Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. There had been some speculation amongst fans that Fox might be willing to renew the robot stompin sci-fi show for another season, but today the network announced it's fall 2009 prime time lineup, and Sarah Connor isn't on it.

Instead, Fox is going for anti-geek programming involving cheesy sitcoms and a new series named Brothers.

While Terminator's ratings slipped steadily over two seasons, this season's finale had fans re-energized and ready for more. But while the series may be over, at least there's a new Terminator movie franchise to capture fan's attention. Lena Headey will be missed, but Moon Bloodgood is ready to step in as the latest in Terminator movie babes when Terminator Salvation debuts this weekend.

Even more awesome imagery from Terminator Salvation has stomped up to my doorstep. Warner Bros has blown out their full bunch of T4 images. Included here you'll find more than 60, brand new images from the movie. Look: more...

If you're not already excited about Terminator Salvation, now is a good time to get that way. It opens in less than two weeks and for geeks, with Star Trek triumphant return already out of the way it's the next big thing. Watch all ten clips here:

Even though we know there’s a Tron sequel currently underway at Disney, there’s still a lot of secrecy surrounding the plot. All we really know for certain is that both Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner are involved and that they’ll send a new generation inside the computer to fight some nameless threat. Well now we have a name for that threat: It’s Skynet.

Terminator Salvation director McG let the whole thing slip early yesterday to the Herald Sun Times Weekly while promoting his new film at ShoWest saying, “You’ve never seen anything like what we’re doing with Terminator and John Connor. It’s so much more than just fighting killer robots this time. Now John not only has to defeat Skynet and its minions in the human world, he’ll have to do it inside the computer world as well.” When pressed for more information McG revealed, “All I can say is that it’s a problem so big, John can only solve it by getting a Clu.”

For the uninitiated, Clu is the original program used by Flynn in his early attempts to defeat the Master Control Program in the original Tron. Clu failed, and later the Tron program was used to bring about the MCP’s destruction. This time, the Master Control Program will actually be Skynet. more...

Now that season two of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is filming and confirmed for a September 8th return to television, Fox has started planning to roll out the red carpet for one of last season’s few successful new shows. Their plan is to get anyone who might have missed it the first time around, by rebooting everything.

In a press release issued today, Fox Television announced that they’ll be re-airing all of Sarah Connor season 1 in the month leading up to the premiere of season 2. The replay of the show kicks off Sunday, August 10th. Here’s their full announcement:
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A great bunch of images snapped from the second season set of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles have popped up online today. Apologies in advance to whoever took them, because I have no idea who did, and thus I have no way to credit you.

The problem, is that the images have been circulated primarily by blog and email. While bloggers are good at spreading around information, they are, as a whole, utter failures as journalists. That means they never credit any of their sources, because they're desperate to hang on to unearned traffic for themselves. Because the photos are everywhere and no one is crediting a source for them, I have no idea who to credit. Thanks blogosphere!

Check out the images below. Beware, they contain minor spoilers. Go no further if you don't want to know anything about Sarah Connor S2.
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With the start of filming on T4 last week, Warner Brothers has launched a Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins production blog for the film. There's already one post on the blog, from director McG in which he talks about getting started on mankind's latest fight against the future.

What McG has to say sounds good, until you remember it's McG, a guy whose made a career out of bad movies. Still, when he says things like "John Connor will be pushed to the brink. And for me, Christian Bale embodies Connor’s strength and tenacity perfectly." it's hard not to get a little tingle.

Along with his announcement of the start of production, is very cool looking piece of concept art. It's a preliminary look at what post-Judgement Day Los Angeles might look like. Check it out below: