Terminator: Dark Fate Tracking for $40 Million Opening Weekend

The Terminator franchise is aiming to get back to its roots with its latest installment, Terminator: Dark Fate, which will essentially erase the history of the films since Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton are reteaming to star in the flick and James Cameron is once again actively producing. Die hard fans of the action series are undoubtedly excited for this potential return to form, and the early box office tracking numbers confirm as much. It looks like Dark Fate could have one of the biggest opening weekends of the entire franchise.

According to Deadline, new early numbers suggest that Terminator: Dark Fate is in line for a $40 million-plus domestic opening weekend haul when it arrives on November 1st. If it hits that $40 million on the dot, the new installment would be the third highest debut in Terminator history. That said, it wouldn't take much more to put it ahead of all of its predecessors.

The current opening weekend record for a Terminator film belongs to 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which opened to $44 million. In 2009, Terminator Salvation opened to $42 million, while Terminator: Genisys earned just $27 million in its opening weekend four years ago.

While the most recent Terminator films have had the biggest opening weekends, it's the wildly-popular Terminator 2 that earned the biggest overall domestic haul. The film earned a whopping $204 million throughout its domestic run in 1991. The next closest total belongs to Terminator 3, pulling in $150 million.

Hamilton hasn't appeared in the franchise as Sarah Connor since T2 and this film is aiming to finally bring an end to her story.

"I always looked at it as examining the consequences of the choices she makes," said director Tim Miller. "And this movie has a time travel aspect, of course, but all of us kind of faced the same problem where you make decisions in your life that will have big consequences in the future based on the path you pick and the decisions you make, and sometimes you have to make those decisions without a complete understanding of the implications of those decisions. And it's something, I think, that everybody can relate to, and often, as I'm sure we've all experienced, sometimes those decisions don't work out well. So I think that this movie was about Sarah examining the implications of those decisions."

Are you looking forward to Terminator: Dark Fate this fall? Could it become the highest grossing Terminator film in history? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Terminator: Dark Fate arrives in theaters on November 1st.