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Megan Ellison's Annapura Pictures has teamed up with her brother's movie production company, Skydance Pictures, on solving the creative problem of what to do with their newly acquired Terminator property.

While the Ellisons now have full control over the intellectual rights to the sci-fi blockbuster, time may be running out for them to make a new Terminator movie. According to the new North American copyright laws, rights for The Terminator revert back to James Cameron in the yeat 2019, 35 years after the release of the first Terminator film.

The Ellisons will now work on hiring a screenwriter to develop story concepts for a new Terminator movie.

Wow, this is a juicy rumor about what Justin Lin's supposed idea for Terminator 5 is partly about. The story first sprouted up on Latino Review, and it goes something like this:

All of the original cast members of The Terminator are supposed to come back in Terminator 5.

Not even the site's reporter knew for sure what their source meant by the "entire original cast", but a feel-pretty-certain guess would mean not just Arnold Schwarzenegger but Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor) and Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese).

That would also involve some major time-trippin' continutity fixing as both Sarah and Kyle are dead in Terminator 3 and T4 movie worlds. However, it wouldn't be the first time that time travel in movies has been used to bring back the supposedly dead.

French movie website Cinemateaser has an interview with Fast Five director Justin Lin. In the piece Lin gets asked about his recent attachment to make Terminator 5, and he talks about how it came to happen.

"It's actually Pacificor that approached me. They had an idea…but I guess a lot of studios didn't go for it or something happened… So then, they came back to me and they said, 'D'you have an idea?' and, I said 'I have THE idea!'" remarked Lin.

Lin also explained that the first Terminator movie made a big impact with him when he watched it as a kid. 30 years after that first film, Lin wants to make certain that his Terminator 5 doesn't use technological tricks to woo the audience. "It’s still very early on, but I don’t want to make a movie where it’s not just showing off," he explained. "I want to support the human elements. If you don’t have humanity, then it just becomes robots."

Rumor has it that Universal Pictures is asking questions about how much it would cost to buy the rights to the Terminator universe. Pacificor, a hedge fund, bought the rights from bankruptcy last year for $29.5 million dollars and still has the property. With Arnold Schwarzenegger now returned to public life and actively seeking new acting jobs, perhaps he may be wooed to star in a new Terminator movie? [Full story]

Yesterday was the final day for bids to be tendered for the Terminator rights. At the 11th hour Sony Pictures submitted their bid for the franchise.

Now we know of two studios bidding for the rights: Sony and Lionsgate. We also know that Lionsgate submitted a bid of $15 million dollars plus an additional 5% cut of future profits earned from new Terminator movies, TV shows, video games or any other creations.

The bids are unsealed and the auction takes place this coming Monday. A bankruptcy court hearing for Halcyon Group, the financially troubled soon-to-be former owner of the rights, is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, February 10.

Lions Gate Entertainment, owners of the Saw horror film franchise, have bid $15 million dollars on acquiring the Terminator movie rights. If successful in their offer to buy the Terminator rights from bankruptcy, Lions Gate would also have to pony up 5% of all gross receipts from any future Terminator movies it made.

The Lions Gate offer is called a "stalking horse", meaning that another company or individual could bid higher and become the next owner, as long as the next new bid is at least $500,000 more than the preceding one. Bidding is open on the Terminator movie rights until the close of business on February 5.

Over at Bleeding Cool, comic book rumormonger Rich Johnson's new website, he's printed a fitting piece of gossip about what's rumored to be the setting for Terminator 5. If you want to know, you need to make the choice and reveal the spoiler info below.

Variety has an interesting article today about who may get to make and release the fifth Terminator movie. While it's just speculation at the moment, the fact is that The Halcyon Company can't go ahead and make Terminator 5 without first offering the project to MGM, the reason being that the movie studio got the right of first refusal to fund and release sequels in the sci-fi franchise after picking up the assets of the bankrupt Orion Pictures. MGM passed on Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation but with hype high for the fourth film the studio may not be so quick as to let the T5 opportunity slide by.

Variety speculates that MGM would have to pay upfront something around the neighborhood of $125 million dollars if one follows the $50 million Warner Bros paid for domestic distrubution and Sony Pictures $75 million for international distrib for Terminator Salvation. And don't forget that MGM would also have to buck up for the marketing of Terminator 5 which, if the film's budget is in the same ballpark as T4, will likely cost around $100 million dollars.

While speaking with Film Journal International, director McG let loose huge spoilers about where the direction of Terminator 5 may lay. Big spoilers. We mean it!

While interviewing Terminator Salvation director McG at Wondercon, FEAR.net's Joseph McCabe landed an exclusive reveal about which former Terminator 2 cast member we may see in the fifth film -- and it isn't who you would first think of.

"I talk to Robert Patrick with great regularity," McG told the site, referring to the actor that played the liquid metal shapeshifting T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. "It's interesting – I was [thinking of] a through line. I'll bounce it off of you guys: I like the idea in a prospective next picture that you meet Robert Patrick the way he looks today, and he's a scientist that's working on improving cell replication so we can stay healthier and we can cure juvenile diabetes and all these things that once again sound like good ideas -- and once again live as an idealized expression of ourselves. So imagine seeing a sixty-year-old Robert Patrick and knowing, 'Holy shit! That's gonna be the T-1000 – who comes back perfect, lean and the whole thing.' I haven't concluded that, but Robert and I had dinner the other night and talked about it. I made two movies with Robert Patrick, so I like him very much. And now he's very heavily into motorcycle riding. He's a really serious guy."

But McG knows that before he can offer Patrick a paycheck there's the little matter of waiting to see how audiences react to Terminator Salvation. "Let Memorial Day come. If we all get together and sit at a table like this and you guys give me a kick in the ass and say, 'Go make another one,' I'll deliver Bale and we'll get it done."

The financial backers of Terminator Salvation are already thinking ahead about a sequel. Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek of The Halcyon Company announced their intention to start developing a fifth Terminator movie at the Dubai International Film Festival today.

The reason for the anticipatory move comes from early positive buzz for Salvation. "We feel the time is now to start shaping the next part of this," said Kubicek at the reveal.

When star Christian Bale signed a contract to appear in Terminator Salvation it also included the option of two additional sequels. Early in the development of T4 its creators stated that they envisioned a new trilogy featuring the leader of the resistance, John Connor, as the main character. [Full story]