James Cameron has shared why he believes Terminator: Dark Fate became a box office flop, citing the inclusion of both Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Cameron, who helped write and produce the 2019 sequel with director Tim Miller, reflected on the project after it lost over $120million (£100million) at the box office.
Speaking to Deadline, Cameron said he was “reasonably happy with the film”, despite some creative differences with Miller during production.
“Tim and I had our battles and we’ve both spoken about that, but the crazy thing is we’re still pals,” Cameron said. “Which is weird. I liked him before the movie, didn’t like him very much during the movie, and I like him now, and I think he feels the same way.
James Cameron CREDIT: Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images for Absolut Elyx
“We’re both these crazy sci-fi geeks and we like a lot of the same things, and I love his show, Love, Death + Robots. But yeah, we butted heads.”
The director said the decision to bring back both Schwarzenegger and Hamilton as Sarah Connor meant the sequel only appealed to older viewers who grew up with Terminator and its 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
“I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold,” Cameron said. “Tim didn’t want Arnold, but I said, ‘Look, I don’t want that. Arnold and I have been friends for 40 years, and I could hear it, and it would go like this: ‘Jim, I can’t believe you’re making a Terminator movie without me.’
“It just didn’t mean that much to me to do it, but I said, ‘If you guys could see your way clear to bringing Arnold back and then, you know, I’d be happy to be involved.’
“And then Tim wanted Linda. I think what happened is I think the movie could have survived having Linda in it, I think it could have survived having Arnold in it, but when you put Linda and Arnold in it and then, you know, she’s 60-something, he’s 70-something, all of a sudden it wasn’t your Terminator movie, it wasn’t even your dad’s Terminator movie, it was your granddad’s Terminator movie. And we didn’t see that.”
He added: “We loved it, we thought it was cool, you know, that we were making this sort of direct sequel to a movie that came out in 1991. And young moviegoing audiences weren’t born. They wouldn’t even have been born for another 10 years.
“So it was just our own myopia. We kind of got a little high on our own supply, and I think that’s the lesson there.”
In a four-star review of Terminator: Dark Fate, NME described it as a “surprising and rousing return to form”.
Cameron is currently promoting his latest film Avatar: The Way Of Water, which is released in cinemas on December 16.
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