James Cameron has blamed the flop of 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate on the ages of its leads Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.
Avator director Cameron, 68, who wrote and produced the film alongside director Tim Miller, 58, said the choice to bring back Schwarzenegger, 75, and Hamilton, 66 as Sarah Connor resulted in the flick becoming ‘your granddad’s Terminator movie’.
Dark Fate – a direct sequel to 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day – lost more than $120million at the box office, ruling out any chance of further sequels.
They won’t be back: James Cameron has blamed the flop of 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate on the ages of its leads Arnold Schwarzenegger (left) and Linda Hamilton (right)
Avatar director Cameron told Deadline: ‘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.’
Adding that he wasn’t particularly invested in the film to begin with, he continued: ‘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.”
Reason: Avator director Cameron , 68, who wrote and produced the film alongside director Tim Miller, 58, said the choice to bring back Schwarzenegger, 75, and Hamilton, 66 as Sarah Connor resulted in the flick becoming ‘your granddad’s Terminator movie’ (pictured last week)
Leads: Cameron said that the direct sequel to a 1991 film meant contemporary movie fans ‘hadn’t even been born’ and ‘wouldn’t even have been born for another 10 years’ when Judgment Day was released (Hamilton and Schwarzenegger pictured 2019)
Bomb: Dark Fate – a direct sequel to 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day – lost more than $120million at the box office
Cameron said that the direct sequel to a 1991 film meant contemporary movie fans ‘hadn’t even been born’ and ‘wouldn’t even have been born for another 10 years’ when Judgment Day was released.
Terminator: Dark Fate marked the return of the franchise’s creator, Cameron, who directed the 1984 classic The Terminator from a script he co-wrote with Gale Anne Hurd.
While Cameron returned to direct 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he was not involved in the three films that followed – 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2009’s Terminator Salvation and 2015’s Terminator Genisys, none of which could replicate the critical and commercial success of the first two films.
Terminator: Dark Fate was more well-received from critics with a 69% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but its $29 million debut was just above 2015’s Terminator Genisys, which would go on to make $89 million domestic and $440.6 million worldwide.
Iconic: While Cameron returned to direct 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day,(pictured) he was not involved in the three films that followed
Legendary: Edward Furlong is pictured as John Connor with Schwarzenegger as the T-800 in the 1991 film
The story followed an hybrid cyborg-human from the future named Grace (Mackenzie Davis) who tries to protect a young girl named Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) from a deadly new Terminator known as the REV9 (Gabriel Luna).
The story is a direct sequel to Terminator 1 and 2, ignoring the events of the other Terminator films in the process.
MKM Partners media analyst Eric Handler stated that Paramount, ‘made a bad decision in greenlighting this film with this particular budget.’
‘This is an aging franchise with aging actors, and the reviews were mediocre,” Handler added.
‘As good of a franchise as this might have been, it doesn’t have the same appeal now,’ he added.
Success story: Schwarzenegger became a global superstar with his role in the franchise
