Edward Furlong revealed his disappointment with the decision to kill future war leader John Connor in 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate.
During an appearance on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Furlong went into detail about his reprisal of a de-aged Connor 28 years after the release of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. “I got called in to do some mocap work and kind of act the scene out,” Furlong recalled. “I got the call actually right when I got sober. They’re like, ‘They want to talk to you about the new Terminator,’ so I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s a sign. Thank you!’”
Furlong added that his heart sunk like a rock when he learned that Connor would only appear in Dark Fate’s shocking opening sequence set weeks after T2 when he meets his demise at the hands of a new T-800 model (Arnold Schwarzenegger). “And I get there and they’re like, yeah, we want you to play you at 14 and we’re just going to kill you. And I’m like, ‘Aw, sh-t,’” Furlong continued.
“And I didn’t understand, like, how the hell are they going to do that? I don’t know, it just felt a little bit like What Ever Happened To Baby Jane situation. So I went in there and did that, so I knew what was happening. It was a mixed feeling. It was understanding that I wasn’t in a place to shoot a movie right then anyway. I was kind of happy a little bit too . . . I was glad to just get the character back to myself, even if it was like for a day.”
The future of Terminator
Terminator: Dark Fate was a critical and commercial disappointment upon release. Franchise creator and producer James Cameron blames the movie’s failure on the advanced ages of stars Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though the franchise has been dormant since Dark Fate, Cameron announced at Dell Tech World that he began writing a new Terminator installment, “but wants to see how #AI shakes out before he goes any further.”
Meanwhile, Netflix is moving forward with Terminator: The Anime Series from Skydance. The upcoming series will be overseen by writer/showrunner Mattson Tomlin (The Batman Part II), director Masashi Kudo (Bleach), and animation studio Production IG (Ghost in the Shell).
At the time of this writing, Terminator: The Anime Series does not have a premiere date.
