Terminator: Dark Fate’s Poor Box Office Might Ruin James Cameron’s Trilogy Plans

Terminator: Dark Fate is in theaters now, and the film is poised to win this week at the box office. There’s one small problem though, even that success might not be enough to jump-start another two movies like James Cameron probably envisioned after his re-entry to the franchise. The Hollywood Reporter made note of the film’s box office predicament in a recent report surrounding the film. The piece details that Dark Fate may have represented a last-chance effort at getting those two new installments off the ground. Possible sequels could be explored on Netflix after the events of the film. Paramount already has a deal in place with the streaming service, so that would be a very comfortable transition. Fans will have to wait and see how it shakes out.

That sort of talk must be very frustrating for James Cameron, who was brought on specifically to breathe some life into the series. He and Tim Miller delivered a legacy franchise sequel in the same vein of Star Wars: The Force Awakens or the last Halloween movie. But, even still, things were not always easy-going on the set of Dark Fate. Miller was adamant that he wanted to deliver his vision for the film. Cameron was on set as an advisor for script purposes, but that doesn’t mean that all of his edits made their way into the final cut. The veteran filmmaker talked about some of those disagreements in an interview with Collider recently. If anyone was expecting Terminator 2 again, they were going to be a little disappointed when they got to their seats.

“I would say many. And the blood is still being scrubbed off the walls from those creative battles,” Cameron said to Collider. “This is a film that was forged in fire. So yeah, but that’s the creative process, right? I mean, my work with Robert on Alita was very different. Robert loved the script, loved everything, said, ‘I just want to make this movie. I want to make the movie the way you see it.’ I was like, ‘No, you got to make it your movie.’ I had the reverse experience with Tim [Miller], which is Tim wanted to make it his movie. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I kind of know a little about this world.’ So I had the matter and the anti-matter version of that producorial experience.”

Miller was laser-focused on delivering his vision for the franchise. That would be kind of difficult to accomplish with a living legend in the room during production. But, Cameron had a conversation about his involvement with the sequel. He told Deadline that he dedicated to honoring the early films and creating an entry that celebrated what fans enjoyed about the first two movies. (Check out Comicbook.com’s review of Dark Fate right here)

“I focused on getting the script punched up. I didn’t feel like we went into the shoot with the script exactly where it should have been. There was a lot of momentum on the project, there was a start date, there was a lot of energy and a lot of “go fever” but the script wasn’t where it needed to be so I quietly worked on it in the background and shipping out pages,” Cameron said to Deadline.

The filmmaker added, “Sometimes I was shipping out pages the day before they shot a scene. I’m not sure that was 100% always helpful, but overall, I kept the characters on track and sounding right and being where they needed to be.”