Turns out Arnold Schwarzenegger actually has plenty of plans now that he’s not a public official anymore and can accept commercial and creative products. Just because he’s making a cartoon and comic book about his fictional super-heroic post-governor activities doesn’t’ mean he can’t also make another Terminator movie.
According to Deadline, a rights package is being shopped around to studios today to make a Terminator movie starring Schwarzenegger and produced by Robert Cort, and Universal, Sony, Lionsgate, and CBS are all looking hard at the opportunity.
This is the first real activity on The Terminator project since February 2010, when the property emerged from a bankruptcy auction and into the possession of Pacificor. The Santa Barbara-based hedge fund posted a bid of $29.5 million, with the promise that additional multimillion-dollar payments for each film would go to Halcyon, the company that made the 2009 McG-directed Terminator Salvation.
Much like Superman, the Terminator franchise is also on a rights-based deadline, albeit a less restrictive one. While DC and Warner Bros. will have to ask the Siegels and Shusters when they want to use Superman starting in 2012, Pacificor has until 2018 until Terminator reverts back to James Cameron, who according to Deadline, has “more or less washed his hands of the Terminator franchise.”
Now, the rights holders shopping a project to studios by no means guarantees that a movie will get made. There isn’t even a screenwriter attached to the project yet, and the salary negotiations on this one are sure to be a monumental undertaking. But I’d be very surprised if, in this sequel and franchise laden Hollywood culture, this one doesn’t happen before 2018.
(via Blastr.)
