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Terminator rights to change hands again


15 January 2010

It's the plot-twist staple that has kept the Terminator franchise going since 1984: just when you think it's dead, suddenly it flickers back into life ready to wreak more havoc. And the same is true of the rights to the story itself, which will shortly change hands once again and most likely trigger production of a fifth Terminator film. The current owner of the franchise, the Halcyon Holding Group, is planning to auction the Terminator this month after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2009.

The financial history of the Terminator series has almost as many twists as the movies themselves. Each instalment in the series was made by a different company after a corporate acquisition of intellectual rights. The first film was made by James Cameron in 1984 for pioneering independent outfit Hemdale (after Cameron notoriously sold his half-share to producer Gale Ann Hurd for $1, or about £0.60), but the company began to struggle financially in the late 1980s and sold its half-share for $10m in 1990 to Carolco, a company owned by producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, who had struck pay-dirt with the Rambo films. Carolco immediately rehired Cameron and spent a then-record $102m on making the sequel – which, setting a pattern for Cameron's future career, turned out to be a solid investment, as T2 delivered a worldwide gross of $519.8m.

What nobody expected was that Carolco would itself then run into financial trouble in the mid-90s, wrecked by the fiascos that were Cutthroat Island and Showgirls. The rights were again sold off before Kassar and Vajna set up a new entity called C2 and reacquired all of the Terminator rights for $15m in 1997. C2 set up Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and released it in 2003 – but without Cameron in the director's chair it was only a modest success, scoring $433.3m worldwide against a $200m budget.

C2 sold the rights again, to Halcyon, in 2007 for $25m and the new owners immediately went into production on Terminator Salvation. Again, Cameron was not involved, with directing duties handed to McG. Although the film was critically lambasted, it performed reasonably well at the box office, earning $372m worldwide – considerably less, however, than the previous instalment.

When the identity of the new owners of the Terminator becomes clear, there is a good chance it won't be one of the major studios, who have never managed to get complete control of the rights. The current favourites – the "stalking horse" bidders – are Lionsgate, the Canadian company who, ironically, now own parts of Carolco that were sold off in the 1990s when it began to founder. And the price it goes for will interest the film industry: Halcyon, it is rumoured, wants $60m (£37m), similar to the amount Nickleodeon paid for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in October 2009.

The Terminator Film Page

Terminator 2: Judgement Day Film Page

Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines Film Page

Terminator Salvation Film Page

Source: Guardian Online

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/14/terminator-rights-auction