Writer reveals Terminator 5 & 6 story ideas

Unimpressed with McG’s attempted reboot of the Terminator film franchise?

Well, despite the Charlie’s Angels director expressing an interest in taking his jump-started story and spreading it across two more films, another player has entered the Terminator arena and made a bid for the franchise.

That player is William Wisher.

Wisher collaborated with James Cameron on the first two Terminator flicks (i.e. the good ones), and he’s drafted a franchise-capping 24-page treatment for a proposed Terminator 5 , as well as a 4-page “concept outline” for Terminator 6 .

Deadline Hollywood took a peek at Wisher’s work, and have nothing but praise for what the scribe has cooked up.

Say they: “Most interestingly, [Wisher] turns the story back to the core characters and time travel storyline of the first two films.”

Apparently the plot for T5 factors in Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, using a time travel MacGuffin that allows them “to interact beyond their single fateful meeting when he traveled back in time to protect her in the original film”.

There’s also a role for Arnie that puts a new twist on his gun-toting character, and plenty of “firepower” throughout.

It remains to be seen if newly victorious Terminator franchise owners Pacificor will hire Wisher to bring the film series to a conclusion, but on the basis of Deadline ’s report, they’d be idiots not to.

Is it time to put this series to bed? Do we need two more films to do so? Please, talk…

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.