Movies
‘Terminator’ Returns In Future As Rights Are Settled
David Ellison’s Skydance Prods. and Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures have agreed to partner on a fifth Terminator following their joint acquistion of rights from Pacificor, says Variety.
The two company heads will produce and Dana Goldberg and Paul Schwake from Skydance will serve as executive producers.
Pacificor, a Santa Barbara-based investment fund with no feature film experience, acquired the rights in a bankruptcy court auction in early 2010 over objections from Sony and Lionsgate. Pacificor agreed to pay $29.5 million, along with a provision for payment to Halycon of $5 million per film for any sequel.
Halcyon paid Mario Kassar $30 million for the Terminator rights in 2007, but then Halcyon filed for Chapter 11 in 2009 as a result of a dispute with Pacificor, which had financed the acquisition. The Terminator assets include the rights to future pics, TV series, DVDs and merchandise.
Terminator Salvation, the fourth film in the franchise, was produced by Halcyon toppers Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson with Warner Bros. handling domestic distribution and Sony taking international. It carried a production pricetag of about $200 million and took in $371 million worldwide in 2009.
A spokeswoman for Annapurna said that under new copyright rules, North American rights to The Terminator franchise will revert back to creator James Cameron in 2019 — 35 years after the original Terminator was released.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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