Despite a box office of $90 million in the United States, Terminator: Genysis has only caused the studio to reevaluate the direction of the franchise. You know, instead of taking the perfectly logical step of stopping the reboot madness.


At a conference, Skydance Media Chief Creative Officer Dana Goldberg said of future Terminator projects, “I wouldn’t say on hold, so much as re-adjusting.” What that means for the TV show announced in 2013 or a sequel to Genisys, we’re not sure.

Because as poor as it did here, Genisys was a monster hit internationally. And it sounds like the “re-adjusting” Goldberg mentioned is going to be targeted to the places that liked the last film. Even though she said they were concerned about the U.S. response to the film, she added that they’ll use “data and research to do a worldwide study and really talk to audiences about what they loved, and what maybe didn’t work for them, so that the next we take with the franchise is the right one.” And the “next take” characterization sounds very much like they’re going to reboot the series yet again.


More than that, they’re going to have a focus group for a movie after it’s been released—which is hilariously backward—and then use the results to crowdsource ideas for the next movie. What is happening in Hollywood.

And despite saying that it’s not on hold, production on another film is no longer on the announced schedule. Production won’t start in early 2016, said Goldberg, because “it would be silly to not have to worry about what audiences have to say.” Like audiences haven’t been very vocal about that.



[The Wrap]

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com .