James Cameron says he’s ‘struggling’ to start new Terminator film

‘I don’t know what to say that won’t be overtaken by real events’ said the director

Three-time Academy Award winner James Cameron admitted he’s finding it challenging to write another Terminator film.

Now in its seventh instalment, Cameron has implied there will be a completely new cast and characters for the next story but he’s struggling to get started.

"I don’t know what to say that won’t be overtaken by real events,” Cameron said in an interview with CNN. "We are living in a science fiction age right now.”

"You’ve got powerless main characters, essentially, fighting for their lives, who get no support from existing power structures, and have to circumvent them but somehow maintain a moral compass. And then you throw AI into the mix,” the Titanic director said.

James Cameron and Terminator actor Arnold Schwarzenegger (Getty Images / Shutterstock)

"Those principles are sound principles for storytelling today, right? So I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator films will not only be possible, but they’ll kick ass,” he added in an interview with Empire magazine.

Though the real struggle may relate to capturing his audience’s attention. "You get too inside it, and then you lose a new audience because the new audience care much less about that stuff than you think they do,” said Cameron.

Cameron, though, remains confident in his ability to produce a quality film without relying on nostalgia. The director admitted that parts of the original Terminator “are pretty cringeworthy”, but it was “just the production value”.

“I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue,” Cameron added. “Let me see your three out of the four highest-grossing films - then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”

The original Terminator, released in 1984, follows Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn child will lead a rebellion against the artificial intelligence system, Skynet, that launches a nuclear war against humanity. Arnold Schwarzenegger played the unstoppable cyborg that the original film was named after and has since appeared in five Terminator films.

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Now, 78, it remains to be seen whether Schwarzenegger will return to the role for the new film.

‘We are living in a science fiction age right now’ said Cameron (AP)

Meanwhile, Cameron has been hard at work on the next instalment of his long-running blockbuster franchise Avatar, after the release of sequel The Way of Water in 2022.

The third film, titled Fire and Ash, was screened to “a few selected people” earlier this year.

According to the director, “the feedback has been [that] it’s definitely the most emotional and maybe the best of the three so far”.

Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released in cinemas on 19 December.