It appears the plan for TERMINATOR 5 is not just to reboot the famed Arnold Schwarzenegger franchise on the big screen but on TV as well. Skydance and Annapurna are planning a new television show that will be executive produced by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier who are writing TERMINATOR 5. The series will be written and run by writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller who wrote THOR and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.
Details about TERMINATOR 5 are being kept secret, but according to Deadline, both the movie and the new TV series will be going back to the original 1984 THE TERMINATOR and will be built around an event in that story but taken in a different direction. From the sounds of that, it makes me think that TERMINATOR 5 will do what J.J. Abrams did with STAR TREK and change the timeline of THE TERMINATOR which will split the new films into an independent parallel universe that keeps the James Cameron films as part of canon and therefore creating a new one where the continuity doesn’t have to be honored. These are time travel movies, after all, so this kind of makes sense.
I have nothing to base this on, but I am going to go ahead and say that the event they are building around is the death of Kyle Reese. Instead of his death in THE TERMINATOR causing the events of the series, if he stays alive that completely alters what happens to both Sarah and John Connor. That would be an awesome direction to take the story. We have already heard rumors that Reese would be a character in the new film and this would make perfect sense.
Alan Taylor will direct Arnold Schwarzenegger in TERMINATOR 5 which is slated to hit theaters in 2015, as is the new television series.
