Lionsgate and Megan Ellison fight for TERMINATOR relaunch rights

Lionsgate and Megan Ellison's Annapurna Films have begun a bidding war for The Terminator relauch with Justin Lin (Fast Five) and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached. As of yesterday, it looked as though Lionsgate was close to winning the rights with an outright purchase worth at least half of the $29.5 million spent by Pacificor to buy the property. According to Deadline, Ellison then stepped in with a higher bid (and is staking the money without a distributor) and they are now fighting to win the rights.

Last month we shared the news that development had begun on The Terminator. While there were several dealmaking scenarios offered, including an option and first dollar gross fees, it's understandable why an outright purchase would be most attractive to the rights holders. The Santa Barbara-based hedge fund posted a bid of $29.5 million, with the promise that additional multimillion-dollar payments for each film would go to Halcyon, (who made McG's Terminator Salvation in 2009) With interest costs continually rising, that is a ton of money to have to pay out. The deal will likely close soon, making this proejct a hot commodity at Cannes, and the third feature at the festival. Lionsgate also has Schwarzenegger in the action film The Last Stand, set up as the English language debut of Kim–ji-Woon. He's also attached to star in Cry Macho.

Lionsgate has been interested in extending the Terminator universe. When Halcyon ran out of money and went into bankruptcy, Pacificor beat out a combined bid by Lionsgate and Sony planning to make back-to-back sequels to bring the franchise to a natural creative conclusion.

Ellison has mostly funded projects like Paul Thomas Anderson's next film and the Kathryn Bigelow-Mark Boal film about the hunt and capture of Osama Bin Laden (which is also being auctioned at the moment by Ellison's reps at CAA). While her involvement in this bidding war seems odd, she is likely looking for a chance to make some money back on her multi-million dollar investment.

Either winner will face the same timing issues. Copyright law stipulates that if you assign your rights, you get them back in 35 years. Cameron assigned his rights to Hemdale, and the North American rights will revert back to him in 2018. Even though Cameron has no interest in the Terminator franchise, a new deal would have to be made with him if the plan was to keep making installments beyond that period. Lin is back to direct Fast and Furious 6 in the near future, but Lionsgate will have no problem getting a new Terminator in the can before the time runs out if they win the rights. 

I would love to see Ellison win the rights personally, her choices have been amazing lately. I am fine with whichever entity wins though and am just excited to see what the film looks like. What are your thoughts on this news?

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