The Terminator franchise has certainly had its ups and downs over the years, with more downs than ups in recent years. Even before the release of Terminator Genisys this past summer, a sequel was already scheduled for 2017, but it sounds like it may have been terminated by Paramount.
Following the critically acclaimed first two movies, the series saw a sequel that was panned, followed by the beloved television series The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and finally two more attempts at rebooting the series with Salvation and Genisys. Both of these were not well liked by fans or moviegoers in general, making the future of the franchise a little murky.
Before the release of Terminator Genisys, Paramount had grand plans that included having Game of Throne’s Emilia Clarke headlining a series of movies as the new Sarah Connor, replacing Linda Hamilton. However, the movie completely bombed in the US, making less than $100 million on $155 million budget. Luckily, the movie did do quite well overseas to bring the total gross to around $440 million, likely leading to a little profit after advertising and everything is factored in.
The abysmal showing in the US appears to have made Paramount rethink their plans, as they have now removed the Terminator Genisys sequel that was scheduled to release on May 19, 2017 from the schedule entirely according to Deadline. Instead, Paramount has now replaced it with the Dwayne Johnson led Baywatch movie.
It’s very possible they are still planning on making a direct sequel and just pushed it back, but I would think there’s a better chance they are going to maybe start from scratch again in a different way after the lack of success of the most recent outing. It’ll probably be awhile before they give us any real details about what’s going on, but for now, it looks like the movie is at best on hold.
