James Cameron really likes Terminator: Dark Fate, but he knows why the movie flopped at the box office. Released on November 1, 2019, Terminator: Dark Fate was the sixth film in the Terminator franchise and a follow-up to Terminator 2: Judgment Day that ignored the previous sequels. Not only did Arnold Schwarzenegger return as the Terminator, but Linda Hamilton also returned to the role of Sarah Connor after 28 years, and with James Cameron returning to the franchise as a producer, it seemed like a recipe for success. Despite the best reviews in the franchise since T2, Dark Fate became a major box office bomb, grossing only $62 million domestically on a budget of $185 million. Even the $261 million wasn’t enough to save Dark Fate, which grossed well below less-loved sequels like Terminator: Genisys and Terminator: Salvation.
Speaking with Empire Magazine about The Terminator‘s 40th anniversary, James Cameron touched upon Terminator: Dark Fate‘s box office. Cameron defended the movie and gave particular praise to Gabriel Luna’s Rev-9 Terminator. “I think the Rev-9 was cool as s–t. Personally, I think that’s as good as anything that we did back then,” said Cameron. “I still think mine are the best, but I put it in solid third.” The issue Cameron sees, however, is in putting so much emphasis on the return of Sarah Connor and Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. Cameron said:
“Our problem was not that the film didn’t work. The problem was people didn’t show up. I’ve owned this to Tim Miller many times. I said, ‘I torpedoed that movie before we ever wrote a word or shot a foot of film…We achieved our goal. We made a legit sequel to a movie where the people that were actually going to theatres at the time that movie came out are all either dead, retired, crippled, or have dementia. It was a non-starter. There was nothing in the movie for a new audience.”
The Terminator Franchise Can Only Move Forward by Embracing the New
Cameron’s open acknowledgment that it might have been a box office miscalculation to cater only to older fans is refreshing. Franchises like Ghostbusters, Halloween, and Jurassic World keep bringing out returning stars at the expense of new characters to help pass the torch, and many have seen diminishing box office returns. Meanwhile, Twisters didn’t need to bring back any existing characters and only had a few small references to the first film, but it worked as a standalone movie and became a box-office hit.
Cameron realizes that for Teminator to stay relevant, they need to try to court new fans and create a new long-term fanbase. Long-running franchises like Doctor Who and Star Trek are good examples of how a series can endure when they attempt to appeal to a new, wider fanbase. Cameron seems to have taken the lessons learned by Terminator: Dark Fate to heart. He already spoke about how his upcoming new Terminator movie will break away from the franchise iconography. Terminator Zero, which debuted on Netflix in August 2024, was a good start for the series’ future as it builds on the franchise’s themes while exploring them in fresh, exciting ways with new characters.