While “Terminator: Dark Fate” is the sixth installment in the franchise, director Tim Miller actually decided to dismiss the three previous movies so that he could just make a direct sequel to “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
Miller did this by bringing Linda Hamilton back as Sarah Connor for the first time since the 1991 blockbuster, while “Dark Fate” also marks the first time since “Judgment Day” that franchise creator James Cameron has been involved, too.
All of which begs the question, does this mark the beginning of a new trilogy and will there be a sequel to “Terminator: Dark Fate?”
Metro recently had the chance to quiz its director and stars about the future of the franchise, with Miller admitting that they actually had all the writers of the planned films come together to devise the story and lay out the future of the franchise before they wrote the script for “Dark Fate.”
“The way we did it was all of the writers for the future films were in the writers room. So everything was a discussion that we had to do together,” Miller recalled. “It wasn’t like we were deliberately planting seeds that we could explore later. We conceived the story arc as one piece.”
“That way, it doesn’t feel, I hope, like we are consciously taking time out of the movie to set up a future moneymaking venture. Because we don’t want it to feel manipulative, in the worst way of franchise feeding the next movie. Because I hate that. I don’t want audiences to ever think we were ever just trying to set something up for the next movie.”
Mackenzie Davis, who stars as Grace in “Dark Fate,” insists that while it was made to be a singular movie that works on its own, there is plenty of room for follow-ups.
“I think like anything, there can be a future if it is great,” she explains. “But if there isn’t one then there is a conclusive and satisfying end to this movie, and your imagination can fill in what happens afterwards. There’s not like a, ‘What! What happens next?’ That’s a great way of making a TV show or a film or anything. Because there’s an ending and then there’s also the chance of a new beginning.”
This is a sentiment that Natalia Reyes, who stars as Dani, the young woman targeted by the new Terminator in “Dark Fate,” echoes. “It is so much work to do a story like this, so I know they wanted to just focus on the first one, try our best, and let’s see what happens.”
However, Reyes believes there is plenty of “room for Dani’s story,” but the creatives need to “figure out what we want to say about technology” before proceeding.
We’ll have to wait a few weeks for box office figures to reveal whether another new “Terminator” might be on the horizon, though, with Miller noting, “We won’t know until a few weeks into November. I hope people like it enough for that to happen, though.”
