Alan Taylor, the director of Thor: The Dark World, won’t confirm or deny if he’s directing the 2015 Terminator film. “I’m under the personal policy to say it’s a rumor,” he told me at the junket for his new Marvel film. Taylor did, however, admit talks have been progressing and if he was to direct the film – hypothetically, of course – fans should regard it like Batman Begins in relation to the Joel Schumacher Batman movies. That is: a respectful remake taking a franchise in a new direction after multiple missteps. Read his quotes and more below.

While Taylor was very assertive in saying his attachment to a new Terminator film was still a rumor, he did talk about the information leaking online:

Funny thing was it came out really early, a reminder of what the blogosphere can do. I had one conversation, didn’t tell anyone and then all of a sudden, BOOM, it was online the next day. So my agent said, ‘You probably should know [this is gonna come up].’ It’s progressed a lot since then, but I’m still officially going to call it a rumor.

I then asked, hypothetically, how he would handle a franchise that had such a strong start (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day) but has since left such a bad taste in fan’s mouths (Terminator: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation). He said the following.

We all love the first two and I actually went back and watched them again and my respect level only went up. I think there is another famous franchise that had a wonderful beginning and then turned a little bananas….Tim Burton’s first Batman is just glorious and by the time it got around to nipples on costumes and all that stuff it sort of lost its way. And for [Christopher] Nolan to come in an say ‘I respect this material so much I’m going to take it up to *here,* that’s a great inspiration.’ I think any version, whoever is directing Terminator, would be very respectful and serve the first two and probably feel a bit more freedom by the end.

The Thor: The Dark World director ended by hypothesizing that official announcements, including actors, “will probably start leaking pretty soon.”

Update: And speaking to Film School Rejects, Taylor said

The funny thing is, those [first] two films could not be more different than each other. The first one was more of a low-budget horror movie, while the second one was more an amazingly well-produced, glossy thriller with a sci-fi concept. They were both so successful, so there’s certain things you learn from them. If you’re going to try and enter the franchise, you better try to come in at that level. Also, it’s a challenging thing, because what they have in mind is a reboot but not an entirely different way of thinking.

If Taylor directs – which sounds very likely – approaching the Terminator franchise with that fresh, dark, reboot mentality certainly sounds like the way to do it. What do you think? The new Terminator film is set for release June 26, 2015.