Terminator Producer Gale Anne Hurd Talks the Future of the Franchise

A lot of fans know Gale Anne Hurd as one of the pioneers behind AMC’s The Walking Dead, but the super-producer originally cut her teeth by bringing one of the biggest franchises of the ’80s and ’90s to the big screen: Terminator. Hurd was a screenwriter on the first Terminator alongside (then husband) James Cameron, and she executive produced T2 and Terminator 3 after she and Cameron divorced. It’s no secret that Terminator has struggled to find its footing after T2; even having James Cameron and Linda Hamilton once again involved couldn’t help Terminator: Dark Fate from flopping (hard) at the box office.

So, if Cameron hasn’t had any luck with revitalizing Terminator, maybe the person to talk to is the lady who helped shape the franchise’s biggest successes. In a recent interview Gale Anne Hurd was asked where the Terminator franchise should go from here:

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Hurd admits, “I wasn’t involved in the last one.”

That said, while Hurd may not be actively involved with Terminator anymore, she still has ideas about what makes the franchise great – and maybe, how it can be great again:

“To give you some perspective, I used to have a scuba diving practice in Micronesia, and we found that they even screened ‘The Terminator,’ albeit a bootleg video version, of one of the most remote islands in the world,” Hurd said. “The awareness is already built-in, and I do think it’s perennial; with the right story with the right cast, and the right direction, I think there could still be a potential future there.”

Spoken like a true-blue producer: Hurd looks at Terminator and still sees a brand that has the global recognition to sell itself in the marketplace of movies and/or television. And she’s not wrong: Terminator has endured from being the little sci-fi/horror film that Cameron and Hurd launched in 1984, to the franchise that fans all over the world have never forgotten or moved away from. Cameron’s films are still revered as classics; the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series is a cult classic; and every new attempt to build on Cameron’s films (Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, Terminator: Genisys, Dark Fate) attracts an audience – even if they ultimately disappoint.

Terminator has been waiting for exactly what Gale Anne Hurd says it needs: the right story, the right director to execute it, and the right cast to sell it.