Megan Ellison’s name has been popping up a lot lately, as she’s gotten involved with Paul Thomas Anderson, John Hillcoat, The Coens, Kathryn Bigelow and reportedly Charlie Kaufman. That’s a serious block of filmmakers, the films of which I can’t help but label mostly as “good-ass movies.” She keeps doing these cool things and shaking up Hollywood (I really wish she would do her Vanity Fair spread or whatever the fuck already, so there’d be a decent, arty picture of her out there), and now she’s apparently sealed the deal on the franchise acquisition that’s been rumored a couple of days- she’s done gone and bought Terminator.
The prestige-cinema one-woman Skynet thing is an easy joke, but the image of her flying across the world to Cannes to sign for that franchise while taking calls about all the stellar project she’s got going on over here- it works.
She’s won a bidding war for the rights to a pair of feature Terminator films, with Justin Lin (current Fast & Furious maestro) and Arnold Schwarzenegger part of the deal, and Fleming @ Deadline presumes this is something close to a $20m deal. She had still competition from Lionsgate, but apparently she swung the proverbial billionaire dick and took the prize. The franchise still needs a new distributor, so there will probably be a nasty battle over those rights as well. The franchise still piques interest at the studios, and it seems Arnold’s return is considered a huge asset. They’re probably right.
Keep in mind this is for the opportunity to produce films that continue the current canon- no remake plans. With money changing hands and deals being signed at the high-end financial level, one presumes work will begin on the next film soon. Justin Lin hopes to keep up with the intensely successful Fast Integer franchise as well, so we’ll see how scheduling shakes out, and when we can expect this thing to start filming.
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