Tim Miller seems to look at Terminator: Dark Fate with regret, now saying he “was wrong” in his belief that the film would be well-received.

Looking back at Terminator: Dark Fate in hindsight, director Tim Miller says it was “wrong” for him to try and relaunch the franchise. In 2019, the sixth Terminator film was released, bringing back Arnold Schwarzenegger once again alongside returning Terminator 2 star Linda Hamilton. The goal was for the film to resurrect the franchise and if the film was well-received, more sequels could be made.

That’s not quite how things turned out. The high-budget movie fell short of expectations at the box office and the response from fans was mixed at best. At San Diego Comic-Con, Miller was present at Collider’s Directors on Directing Panel. Per Deadline, Miller was asked if there were any more Terminator movies in his future. After Miller joked that he “didn’t like” that question, the director suggested that it’s perhaps best to leave that franchise be after his effort to reboot the movie series didn’t work out.

“Terminator’s an interesting movie to explore, but maybe we’ve explored it enough. I went in with the rock hard nerd belief that if I made a good movie that I wanted to see, it would do well. And I was wrong. It was one of those f**king Eureka moments in a bad way because the movie tanked. [If it didn’t tank,] then why aren’t people returning my phone calls? I think if you make a lower cost Terminator movie, a good director and movie star could make it great. It could be made with sock puppets and it could be awesome. I’d like to do a Terminator CG.”

Terminator: Dark Fate Underperforming Has Left the Franchise Dormant

Tim Miller directed Terminator: Dark Fate using a screenplay by David Goyer, Justin Rhodes, and Billy Ray; the story was crafted by Goyer, Rhodes, Charles Eglee, Josh Friedman, and James Cameron. Along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, the film starred Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, and Diego Boneta. Edward Furlong also made a special appearance of sorts when his face was digitally inserted onto a stand-in’s body, though this was mostly ill-received by fans.

The movie pulled in around $261 million in worldwide ticket sales. For a pre-pandemic release for a new installment of a major movie franchise, those numbers were well below what the expectations had been. Because the film had such a high budget, it had wound up losing more than $122 million, making Dark Fate one of cinema history’s biggest box office duds. Any plans to develop additional installments were canceled based upon this underperformance and there are no active plans at this time for a new Terminator movie to be made.

However, the franchise will continue on in other mediums. It was recently announced that a new video game is on the way set in the Terminator world. The open world survival game is not yet titled but is planned to come to consoles and PC in the future. A trailer for that game has been released and you can check it out below.

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