The first Terminator was, by all accounts, an indie product. The other ones, well, they weren’t, and it unfortunately showed.
But, if rumours are to be trusted, an indie production company under one Megan Ellison might actually purchase the rights to the newest Terminator (which Schwarzenegger is quite keen on being part of again):
As for Ellison, this is a big surprise. She has shown a willingness to back projects by prestige filmmakers, funding not only the Paul Thomas Anderson pic that was just bought for worldwide distribution by The Weinstein Company, but also the Kathryn Bigelow-Mark Boal drama about the hunt and capture of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, which is also being auctioned at the moment by Ellison’s reps at CAA. Why would she veer from prestige pictures? Maybe she is looking for a franchise that could give her a better chance to make some money back on her multi-million dollar investment.
I wouldn’t mind. Maybe we’d get more scenes like that then.