Terminator 7: James Cameron says No Schwarzenegger & No fan-friendly callbacks in next Terminator movie!

After Avatar: Fire and Ash, James Cameron is tackling a new Terminator movie and he explains the next one will be a blank slate with no callbacks!

TerminatorBy Chris 20h agoComments

James Cameron is going to take a break from Avatar after Fire and Ash debuts this weekend and will soon shift his attention to a new Terminator movie! While we've known Cameron has been writing a script for Terminator 7, the last we heard he had encountered writer's block when trying to envision a future that won't become reality by the time the film releases. More recently however, it sounds like he found his niche and will actively begin work on a new Terminator film sooner rather than later. However, fans should not get their hopes up seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger reprise his role again, nor should they anticipate any cameos or callbacks. From the sounds of it, James Cameron is starting with a blank slate, a new Terminator story devoid of tethers to previous installments:

A picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron on the set of The Terminator

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Cameron first portrayed the apocalypse in his 1984 debut, The Terminator, a franchise he’s quietly working on revisiting. “Once the dust clears on Avatar in a couple of months, I’m going to really plunge into that,” he says. “There are a lot of narrative problems to solve. The biggest is how do I stay enough ahead of what’s really happening to make it science fiction?”

Asked whether he’s cracked the premise, Cameron replies, “I’m working on it,” but his sly smile suggests that he has. The result will be the first Terminator film Cameron has been involved in that won’t star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I can safely say he won’t be [in it],” Cameron says. “It’s time for a new generation of characters. I insisted Arnold had to be involved in [2019’s] Terminator: Dark Fate, and it was a great finish to him playing the T-800. There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren’t imagining.”

T-800 Terminator standing in fire

Cameron further went on to elaborate on his disinterest in revisiting the past, referencing Noah Hawley's Alien: Earth and what the showrunner did with the timeline and lore:

When I mention Noah Hawley’s AI-themed reinvention of the Alien franchise with Alien: Earth, Cameron praises the FX drama as “great; a lot of fun,” but notes it leaned on the first two Alien films, and that doing fan-friendly callbacks is “what I’m not going to do” with Terminator. “I’m not criticizing it, but I was there for Aliens, what, 41 years ago? Something like that wouldn’t be of interest to me.”

“The things that scare you the most are exactly the things you should be doing,” Cameron declares. “Nobody should be operating artistically from a comfort zone.”

It sounds like the next Terminator will be more of a soft reboot than a sequel to any of the established films so far. This new direction could breathe new life into a once renowned sci-fi franchise. Sadly the last few entires in the franchise failed to live up to Cameron's legacy with the first 2.

Are you excited with this new direction Cameron is taking? Let us know in the comments!