Fans were hopeful that the long-awaited return of James Cameron would stop the steady decline of the Terminator franchise, which was fair enough. After all, his first two outings with the property remain genuine classics, but even he couldn’t save Dark Fate. He took on the role of a hands-on producer and also developed the story, but his involvement ultimately led to conflict with director Tim Miller and the movie bombed hard at the box office.
Indeed, the pic marked the third underwhelming reboot for the series in a decade and it doesn’t seem like anyone’s going to be begging Skydance Media for a chance to reboot it yet again. At least, not anytime soon given that Terminator has been suffering from the law of diminishing returns for a very long time now.
But television is a whole different story, especially when we’re talking about animated projects, and it seems that the property will be returning on to our screens once more. Only this time, it won’t be via theaters, but on Netflix.
Yes, Variety is reporting today that the streaming giant is cooking up an anime series for Terminator that comes from The Batman writer Mattson Tomlin. Plot details remain scarce, but we’ve been promised that the show will “explore [the franchise’s] universe” in new and exciting ways.
“’Terminator’ is one of the most iconic sci-fi stories ever created–and has only grown more relevant to our world over time,” said John Derderian, Netflix’s vice president of Japan and anime. “The new animated series will explore this universe in a way that has never been done before. We can’t wait for fans to experience this amazing new chapter in the epic battle between machines and humans.”
Unfortunately, it remains unknown if any of the franchise’s key cast members will return, and it’s also unclear how this project will fit into the overall timeline/continuity, but it’s certainly an exciting prospect. After all, the brand might be struggling on the big screen, but the Terminator series will no doubt be able to find a sizeable audience on the world’s largest streaming platform. And if for some reason it doesn’t, well, then it’ll definitely be time to retire the property for good.