Producer says ‘The Terminator’ was “ruined” when James Cameron cut a vital scene
Gale Anne Hurd, the producer of James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi blockbuster The Terminator, has revealed in a new social media post that the director cut a key scene from the movie after financiers pressured him to cast their friends.
The scene Hurd refers to allegedly offered an explanation as to how Cyberdyne Systems, the tech corporation behind Skynet, obtained the chip that gets placed into the heads of Terminators.
“‘The Terminator’ financier John Daly’s Hemdale Films had an output deal with Orion Pictures but hadn’t yet made a hit (that changed with our film and ‘Platoon’),” Hurd tweeted. “They insisted we use financier friends, not actors, in this scene, which ruined it for us.”
The financier’s friends “were paid as actors, via the Taft Hartley act,” Hurd continued. “I think [Daly] insisted they be in the film because the financiers were promised a return on their investment and had yet to receive one. Daly never believed the film would be a success.”
A subsequent comment asked Hurd whether Cameron cut those scenes because the financiers’ friends were poor actors. “Jim (thankfully) was never satisfied with ‘just ok,’ even back then,” Hurd replied.
Earlier this year, Cameron, who often explores the potential of future technology in his movies, explained that he had tried to warn the world about the dangers of AI in 1984’s The Terminator.
Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger also recently addressed the dawning reality of AI technology. “Today, everyone is frightened of it, of where this is gonna go,” he said during an LA press event in June. “And in this movie, in Terminator, we talk about the machines becoming self-aware and they take over… Now, over the course of decades, it has become a reality. So it’s not any more fantasy or kind of futuristic. It is here today. And so this is the extraordinary writing of Jim Cameron.”
Watch the trailer for The Terminator below.
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