James Cameron says he can’t write Terminator 7 because “I don’t know what to say that won’t be overtaken by real events.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/18/the-ai-future-is-too-scary-even-for-james-cameron-where-can-the-terminator-franchise-go-from-here
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“James Cameron has a confession: he can’t write Terminator 7. And it’s not because Hollywood won’t let him, as he’s too busy making the new Avatar – it’s because reality keeps nicking his plotlines. “I’m at a point right now where I have a hard time writing science-fiction,” Cameron told CNN this week. “I’m tasked with writing a new Terminator story [but] I don’t know what to say that won’t be overtaken by real events. We are living in a science-fiction age right now.”
It’s an understandable quandary for the veteran film-maker. Back in 1984, when the first Terminator movie came out, there was genuine shock value in the idea of a killer robot travelling through time from a future in which the wretched dregs of humanity survive in a chrome-plated hellscape dominated by their robot overlords. These days, the only far-fetched part of the movie is the bit where the T-800 turns up alone and completely naked, as opposed to arriving flanked by a swarm of AI-guided drones.
We may not have achieved time travel just yet, but we do have [artificial intelligences capable of quietly teaching themselves sarcasm](https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/i-tried-chatgpts-new-sarcastic-voice-and-it-made-me-hate-mondays-even-more), [city-wide facial recognition](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/15/privacy-fears-moscow-metro-rolls-out-facial-recognition-pay-system), and [robot learning systems deciding who lives and dies](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/ukraine-russia-autonomous-drones-ai). That’s the heart of Cameron’s problem: in 1984, Skynet was a terrifying piece of speculative fiction. In 2025, it’s basically LinkedIn with nukes. The creeping dread of AI isn’t a future shock any more; it’s the news cycle. From AI-powered spyware in our pockets to deepfake scams and voice-mimicking chatbots, the Terminator franchise no longer has the monopoly on making you want to hurl your hi-tech personal possessions into the sea.”
James Cameron doesn’t do what James Cameron does, for James Cameron… James Cameron does what James Cameron does, because James Cameron is… James Cameron
Funny as I have been saying this this year when people ask me why Im not watching movies or series anymore. The world is a bigger drama than Netflix
Makes perfect sense. Tech has a long way left to evolve, but most of it is human-internal and that doesn’t make for a fun movie – there’d be nothing to see for most of it.
Just make John Conor incel and terminator to pretend anime girl to lure him out.
No one wants terminator 7 my man everything after number 2 has been average at best but in most cases utterly shite
Would kind of like a movie to wrap up the series that definitively shows which side won the war and how they plan to rebuild after
He totally skipped over the part where it’s used by corrupt politicians to influence people and make racism seem acceptable
Make a cool movie. Not everything has to say something or be relevant to current events
Easy. Go the TSCC route and begin showing human/machine cooperation. There is so much storytelling potential left. Trying to trust each other, negotiations, misunderstandings, betrayal…
He could write something where the cyborgs become good citizen.
A sentient tin of back beans is sent back in time to prevent BBQ flavoured baked beans from being invented. I have nothing again either but I am not a sentient bean psychologist person so I wonder why these two would be warring in the future
https://youtu.be/0pKRn_JlQi4?si=3DpJTHsAiFj07op8
The next terminator should be this:
@1:25.
James Cameron closed all of the doors except this one.
Good. He should concentrate on Battle Angel 2 then. 🙂
Science fiction might be a bummer but since its so sciency right now it would be easy to try and predict the timeline and sell that instead of trying to be fanciful and inventive. The near future will be as good as a scifi anyways. Better than terminator IMO as far as materials.