James Cameron Reveals There's Been Discussion About Another Terminator Film

Back in 2019, Terminator: Dark Fate hoped to course-correct the beloved franchise after a number of underwhelming installments, only for that film to also become a disappointment at the box office. While franchise creator James Cameron has been busy working on his Avatar series in recent years, with Avatar: The Way of Water out now in theaters, he recently revealed that discussions have taken place about developing a new Terminator. The filmmaker made sure to clarify that those discussions were quite tenuous, but that he already has some ideas of the storytelling avenues he would explore to bring the series back to its rightful glory.

"Well, the Avatar films are about the environment; I'm not dealing with A.I.," Cameron recalled on the Smartless podcast. "If I were to do another Terminator film and maybe try and to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided ... I would make it much more about the A.I. side of it than bad robots gone crazy."

With Cameron having already filmed Avatar 3, portions of Avatar 4, and with an Avatar 5 confirmed, it's unclear when the filmmaker would have room in his schedule to commit to a new Terminator. While Cameron directed the first two installments in the series, he has largely been absent from the franchise, yet he returned to serve as a producer on Dark Fate.

In fact, Cameron recently recalled that it might have been his involvement in Dark Fate that caused challenges with the overall experience.

"I'm actually reasonably happy with the film. [Director] Tim [Miller] and I had our battles and we've both spoken about that, but the crazy thing is we're still pals. Which is weird," Cameron revealed to Deadline. "I liked him before the movie, didn't like him very much during the movie, and I like him now, and I think he feels the same way. We're both these crazy sci-fi geeks and we like a lot of the same things, and I love his show, Love, Death + Robots. But yeah, we butted heads."

He continued, "I think the problem, and I'm going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold [Schwarzenegger]. 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."' 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.'"

Stay tuned for details on the possible future of the Terminator franchise.

Are you hoping we get another Terminator film? Let us know in the comments!