Terminator: Dark Fate faces a 100 million dollar loss

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

For the last ten years, every filmmaker working on a TERMINATOR film has been hoping for their movie to be the start of a trilogy. TERMINATOR: SALVATION was supposed to get two follow-ups, as was TERMINATOR: GENISYS, and it was made very clear that the same hope was in place for last weekend's release, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE. But every time these movies come out, the box office results indicate that the general audience is responding to the offer of a trilogy by saying, "No, thanks, we're good with the TERMINATOR movies we already have."

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE has only had its opening weekend so far, but the opening weekend is the only chance movies are given to impress these days. When an underwhelming domestic opening of $29 million is added to the $94.6 million international box office, DARK FATE made $123.6 over the weekend. A number that would have most of us dancing in the streets. But in this case, the film is being called a bomb and it's being reported that co-financiers Skydance Media, Paramount Pictures, Tencent, and 20th Century Fox (which has become property of Disney since DARK FATE went into production) are facing a loss in the range of 110 to 130 million dollars.

That's because the film had a ridiculously huge $185 million budget, plus global marketing added another 80 to 100 million to the cost. The movie would reportedly have to make around $450 million worldwide just to break even. That doesn't seem likely at this point, so it's no surprise to hear that the DARK FATE sequels aren't expected to move forward.

Of the three potential trilogy starters, I thought DARK FATE had the best chance of making it happen, since it marks the return of franchise creator James Cameron. Cameron produced the film and also worked with writers David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes, Charles Eglee, and Josh Friedman to craft a story that could span three movies. 

Directed by Tim Miller from a screenplay by Goyer, Rhodes, and Billy Ray, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE ignores previous sequels, acknowledging only the events of THE TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Linda Hamilton reprises the role of the heroine from those films, Sarah Connor (written off as dead back in TERMINATOR 3, then rebooted with Emilia Clarke in the role for GENISYS), which is another reason I thought DARK FATE might be a success. This sequel finds that Sarah is now 

a grizzled lone wolf who must team up with a mechanically enhanced female soldier to protect another young woman targeted by Terminators. 

Hamilton's co-stars include Natalia Reyes as new heroine Dani Ramos, Mackenzie Davis as the "mechanically enhanced female soldier" Grace, Diego Boneta as Dani's brother, Gabriel Luna as the latest villainous Terminator, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as an older, bearded Terminator.

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE is now in theatres if you want to try to boost its box office returns, but it's already looking like the film has met exactly what its subtitle predicted. Maybe if they had tried to emulate the low budget original film instead of trying to top the action and stunts of TERMINATOR 2…

Word is that the production companies and studios behind the latest TERMINATORs may have realized that this is a case of "IP failure." New TERMINATOR movies are not the event films they were expected to be. So chances are we won't be seeing any further sequels like SALVATION, GENISYS, or DARK FATE any time soon. But as Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations says, "IPs are harder to kill off than Jason Voorhees," so I'm sure we haven't seen the last of this franchise. It's just not clear what form it will take when it comes back.