Caffeinated Clint
When it was announced that a new “Terminator” trilogy was in the works – kicking off with next week’s “Terminator : Genisys” – it was revealed that Skydance Productions, the film’s producer and bank, had plans for a new TV series that would also don the recognizable brand name.
At a press day for “Genisys”, Skydance’s David Ellison and Dana Goldberg offered an update on the series, suggesting it might be a 13-episode offering on cable.
“It’s something that we’re developing as we speak”, Ellison tells Collider. “To speak kind of larger to that, one of the things we would love to do at Skydance—it’s a very lofty goal—is to build worlds across multiple mediums. And to me, I think everyone talks in Hollywood about franchises, ‘it’s a franchise business, it’s a franchise business’. I think that’s a slightly old-fashioned word, and I think it’s a world creation business. The dream for us would be to be able to obviously make films, television shows, we have a video game with Glu, comic books, and they all should be standalone experiences. If you just watch the movies or if you just watch a television show, it’s a complete experience. But if you are the kind of fans that we are over this material, and you watch all of it collectively, it all interweaves to feel like a larger universe that you can experience if you’re a huge fan of Terminator or any of the other franchises that we’re fortunate to work on, that’s really when you talk about the future of Skydance, one of the things that we really want to be a part of building.”
Sounds like the show might tie-in with the new movie…
“A little premature to be able to say, but I will say anything we do along those lines, it will absolutely have connective tissue. It would be a mistake and a little old-fashioned to have a television show and a movie, both based on something that actually don’t cross over in any way, shape, or form.”
Unlike the last ‘Terminator’ series, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”, the new should would likely air on cable TV.
“Our gut aspiration would be a cable-driven show for something like Terminator” Ellison says. “It’s amazing to be in the network space. We have not been a part of it yet, but obviously when you’re focused on making 13 episodes, it allows you to have more development time to dive deeper. That being said, there have been amazing shows on network television. One of my favorites is the first couple seasons of Alias. I’ll never forget seeing J.J.’s pilot for that show and just being blown away and floored by how phenomenal it was, and so it really is on a case-by-case basis. And Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob’s [Roberto Orci] writing on those first two seasons, I mean I was riveted, absolutely loved it. I really think it depends on what executives and who wants to do what at what particular point in time.”
