The Terminator franchise is in the hands of producer Megan Ellison, who’s Annapurna Films fought it out with Lionsgate in a deal which has Fast & Furious 5’s Justin Lin onboard to direct and Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the starring role.
Ellison is the daughter of US business magnate Larry Ellison, and she’s decided to put some of daddy’s cash to good use and fund a number of interesting upcoming features, including the hunt for Osama Bin Laden project, which reteams The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow and that film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal. It was also reported last week that she sold worldwide rights to The Weinstein Company for Paul Thomas Anderson’s next feature, which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix.
She appears to be putting her weight behind some prestige pictures, which don’t necessarily sit within (with the recent exception of the ‘Bin Laden’ feature) the mainstream or appeal to a large audience (she came through for Anderson after he’d seen his pet project stall many time, with studios unwilling to put their money behind it).
It remains to be seen if she’ll insist on the same level of commitment to quality over The Terminator series, but anything that’s produced by Annapurna Films (she was an executive producer on the recent True Grit too), has to be an marked improvement on ‘Salvation’ right?!?
News via Deadline
