James Cameron is committed to bringing back the Terminator franchise, and, with Arnold Schwarzenegger already aboard, he's adding another key element: Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor.
Speaking at an event celebrating his first two Terminator movies, he announced that Sarah Connor will, to quote one of the franchise's slightly well known lines, be back. "As meaningful as she was to gender and action stars everywhere back then, it’s going to make a huge statement to have that seasoned warrior that she’s become return."
And it's part of his aim to bring a little gender parity to older action stars. "There are 50-year-old, 60-year-old guys out there killing bad guys," he said, "but there isn’t an example of that for women."
Deadpool's Tim Miller is directing the new movie (aiming to kick off a fresh trilogy), which Cameron has created a story for, handing the script chores to one of Hollywood's favourite current stalwarts, a TV-style writers' room that included David Goyer and Josh Friedman. While the story details are still being guarded by looking T-800s, the plan is for the new movie to serve as a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day, (hopefully) helpfully removing the other movies from the canon, and introducing some new characters to handle the story going forward. "We’re starting a search for an 18-something woman to be the new centerpiece of the new story," Cameron said. "We still fold time. We will have characters from the future and the present. There will be mostly new characters but we'll have Arnold and Linda’s characters to anchor it."