The ‘Terminator’ Cinematic Universe Is On Hold ‘Indefinitely’

Okay, so maybe he won’t be back after all.

The plan has been for Terminator Genisys to kick off a whole new trilogy of Terminator movies. If you saw the movie in theaters, you know that this new sequel to the James Cameron classic deliberately left a lot of plot threads dangling; most fundamentally, who sent Arnold Schwarzenegger’s good Terminator (nicknamed “Pops”) back through time to protect the young Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) decades before the events of Terminator 1. The idea was to pick up these ideas in the next Terminator, which I’m guessing would have been called Terminator Ex0dus.

But Terminator Genisys didn’t generate much box office excitement, except in China, where the film made over $110 million. Here in the U.S., it grossed just $89 million and wound up as one of the biggest commercial and critical flops of the summer (even though I liked it). Those numbers, it seems, have finally killed Schwarzenegger’s eternal pledge to return; The Hollywood Reporter says that the plans for those additional Terminator sequels are now being reconsidered by the rights holders at Skydance Productions. “The $150 million-plus movie still will lose money,” they write, “and sources say the notion of a Terminator universe is on hold indefinitely.”

That’s a disappointment for at least one person: Me, since I actually liked Terminator Genisys and would have happily gone back to see at least one or two more sequels. Sadly, this looks like another nail in the coffin of Schwarzenegger’s film career. Nothing he’s made since returning to full-time acting in 2013 has grossed over $100 million in the United States, and now he’s announced he’ll be replacing Donald Trump on The Celebrity Apprentice. There’s a real chance his days of making big action movies are over, a prospect that leaves me with just one final comment: “I know now why you cry.”