“The last thing I want to do is take a title and exploit it,” says Josh Friedman, the man charged with scribbling the new Terminator TV show, tentatively titled The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Fortunately for Friedman, as far as exploiting the Terminator series goes, we’re pretty sure someone got there before him.
The War Of The Worlds writer has been hired by Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar's C2 Pictures, which produced the last bionic outing, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. Now, in agreement with Warner Bros TV, they are prepping the show for Fox.
Also in development is the fourth Terminator flick. C2 Senior Vice-President James Middleton admitted there will be a certain amount of crossover between the two projects, with the TV series picking up the life of Sarah Connor from where she was at the end of T2: Judgement Day; having supposedly stopped any possibility of creating any more psycho killing machines.
The character was memorably portrayed in the movies by Linda Hamilton who hits 50 next year and will not be involved in the show. “The challenge is trying to figure out how to reinterpret her for television,” Friedman says. “The show needs to stand on its own while still being respectful of the franchise.”
Whether any of the new Terminator projects will include Arnold Schwarzenegger is yet to be confirmed. With the California Governor getting on a bit, some changes may have to be made to his catch phrase… “I’ll be back… right after I’ve been for my fifth pee of the evening.”
