There’s a darker cut of Terminator Salvation confirms its director McG, although it’s unlikely we’ll ever get to see it.
The first of the three attempts in a row to launch a new trilogy of Terminator films came with 2009’s Terminator Salvation. The was the sequel that Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t do (given he was Governor of California at the time), and that would take the whole franchise off in a complete different direction.
Off the back of his success with Charlie’s Angels, McG landed the job of directing the film, that lured Christian Bale and Sam Worthington to headline its cast. And at one stage, the news surrounding the movie was dominated by Christian Bale’s pretty infamous rant on set. You don’t have to look too far on YouTube to find that.
John Brancato and Michael Ferris penned the screenplay, although Jonathan Nolan did significant uncredited rewrites during filming.
The film though got a middling reception upon its release, although was far from a box office failure. It grossed $371m worldwide off its $200m budget, but that wasn’t enough to get the follow-up movie over the line. Furthermore, the company behind the film – The Halycon Company – was heading into bankruptcy, and when the rights to the Terminator were ultimately re-auctioned when it needed to raise funds, the decision was made to press ahead with what became Terminator Genisys instead.
Yeah.
McG has been chatting about his Terminator film though in a fresh interview with CBR, and intriguingly, he’s opened up the possibility of a new director’s cut of the movie.
“It’s interesting because I feel like we did so much right with Terminator but, ultimately, got just enough wrong that we got beat up a little bit by the fanbase and it really, really broke my heart”, McG said. “And now, strangely, I think the film has started to age better”.
He added that “there is a different cut. I have my own cut of that film and there’s people online that talk about wanting to see that cut. And that’s interesting. But I think I got a lot of things right with that”.
He teased that maybe “the cut that I have of that movie hidden away is the answer”, noting that it was darker (and praising Jonathan Nolan’s work). Still, whether it sees the light of day is a whole other matter. The complexity of Terminator rights – especially surrounding Salvation – makes it what you could comfortably call a long shot.
Still, never say never, right?
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