Terminator: Genesis Casts Miles Dyson’s Son

By Rudie Obias | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Dayo OkeniyiAccording to Deadline, Terminator: Genesis has cast actor Oladayo A. “Dayo” Okeniyi to play the role of Danny Dyson, the son of Miles Dyson, the original inventor of the neural-net processor that led to the ultimate development of Skynet. Danny was featured in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and was played by DeVaughn Nixon, who is still acting in Hollywood, most recently as Omar on The Secret Life of the American Teenager on ABC Family. Of course, Miles Dyson died in Terminator 2, and as the mythology goes, Danny Dyson grows up to be a Steve Jobs-type computer genius. Apparently he will serve as a crucial plot point in the new movie.

Dayo Okeniyi is a Nigerian-born actor who is best known as District 11 Tribute Thresh in the first Hunger Games movie. He has appeared in The Spectacular Now, Endless Love, and Runner, Runner, as well as the science fiction TV series Revolution. It’s good to see Dayo Okeniyi getting work as an actor in a big Hollywood movie, but why didn’t the film’s producers just cast DeVaughn Nixon instead? It would be nice to have some continuity from the original series into the new one. Nixon is also age appropriate for the older Danny Dyson role.

Attack The Block‘s John Boyega was up for the Danny Dyson role too, but it went to Okeniyi instead. Considering that Boyega was up for both Terminator: Genesis and Star Wars: Episode VII, there is some Internet speculation that the 22-year-old British actor might have landed the Star Wars gig instead.

Terminator: Genesis has definitely been one of those projects where many are uncertain if it should actually happen or not. The last two outings for the Terminator film franchise didn’t exactly bring the series back into prominence with Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines in 2003 and Terminator: Salvation in 2009. Although Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a good effort, Genesis still seems like a big question mark in terms of quality. Nevertheless, the film series is going in an interesting direction, to say the least.

There are still no confirmed plot details for Genesis yet, but it seems that time travel is a given, and with rumor suggesting its characters will leap through time and into the storylines of the earlier Terminator films. That could help give the new trilogy its own identity without negating the original films.

Laeta Kalogridis (Avatar) and Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry) wrote Terminator: Genesis‘ screenplay, and the pair will also serve as executive producers on the Terminator TV series that will tie into the new film trilogy. Screenwriters Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller (X-Men: First Class, Thor) will also write episodes for the show. Stentz and Miller will also most likely be the series’ showrunners. Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones, Thor: The Dark World) will direct. Genesis stars Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke (no relation), Jai Courtney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as the T-800.

Terminator: Genesis hits theaters everywhere on July 1, 2015.