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Terminator Zero, a new anime set in the world of the iconic franchise, is heading to Netflix very soon. However, despite the legacy behind it, creator Mattson Tomlin says he face no barriers in creating a new story for this world.
"I’ve worked on a lot of franchises and usually there are guardrails or roadblocks, and a lot of hoops to jump through," Tomlin tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which hits newsstands on August 7 and features Alien: Romulus on the cover. "This was the opposite. They said, 'You can do anything'.'
Their one caveat was to include some kind of Japanese component to the narrative, which he was more than happy to honor. "The Terminator franchise has largely taken place on the US/Mexico border. With this I could ask, ‘What’s going on in other places?’ It was just an invitation for me to say my piece and do my own thing, without undoing or stepping on the toes of anybody that had come before me."
The eight-episode first season follows a warrior sent back in time to protect an AI scientist from being hunted by a cyborg, and ultimately save humanity. Tomlin hopes that he'll have the chance to tell more of this story too, in a second season and beyond.
"From the moment that I started, I knew what the final image of the series would be," he adds. "I’m not just completely winging it, season to season. There is a generational story that I want to tell here, and there’s a profound place that I’m trying to go using Terminator to go there. I hope I’m lucky enough to do it."
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Terminator Zero releases on August 29. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Alien: Romulus on the cover and is available from Wednesday, August 7.
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