By Ryan Parsons | Image property of respective holders, Variety.
Sam Worthington
It looks like Sam Worthington has found his genre. After playing lead in the James Cameron-directed Avatar, the actor has signed up to give Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins a go.
Worthington for Terminator Salvation
Worthington landed the role thanks to Cameron, who recommended the actor to Terminator Salvation director McG. Though Cameron stayed far away from T3 -- the first Terminator movie he did not direct -- the recommendation shows that he might be warming back up to the franchise.
The film's plot is still being kept under wraps, but we do know that Worthington will play Marcus, a central figure in a three-picture arc that begins after Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust. A group of survivors led by John Connor (Christian Bale) struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job.
Cameron's involvement in the Terminator franchise ended when Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna bought the rights to the franchise at a Carolco bankruptcy auction. They pulled the property right from under Cameron, prompting the director to remove himself from involvement.
Cameron could have scored on the deal thanks to a multimillion-dollar rights buyout for T3, but he signed all this over to his now ex-wife, Gale Anne Hurd, for a single dollar before they made the first film in order to guarantee he wouldn't be replaced as director.
The slate was wiped clean, however, when Halcyon Co. bought out all franchise rights from Kassar and Vajna and positioned the new Terminator trilogy to be released through Warner Bros.
If Cameron wasn't so busy with Avatar, would he have come back to direct one or all installments in the new trilogy? One can only wonder.
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