The producer of “Terminator” tells how the scene in question was “spoiled” and therefore cut during editing…
Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead), producer of the Terminator franchise, reveals that the key scene that director James Cameron cut from the cult 1984 film was removed because the film’s financiers forced them to include their friends this who ruined everything.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the producer-screenwriter took to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday to share the scene in question which shows how Cyberdyne Systems, the company responsible for developing Skynet, obtained the Terminators’ computer chip.
“John Daly’s Terminator Hemdale Films financier had a production deal with Orion Pictures but had yet to produce a hit (that changed with our film and Platoon). They insisted that we use friends of the financier and not actors in this scene, which ruined it for us.”
Gale Anne Hurd added that the financier’s friends were being paid as actors because of the Taft-Hartley Act. “I think he insisted they be in the film because the financiers had been promised a return on investment and had yet to receive one“, she said of John Daly, who died in 2008.”Daly never believed the film would be a hit.”
When a fan asked why james cameron cut the scene, finding the actors to be decent in terms of performance, the producer replied, “Jim (thankfully) was never satisfied with “just right”, even back then!”
You know it, terminator was a huge hit, paving the way for five sequels and launching Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career. The film’s star also recently claimed that the film predicted the future of artificial intelligence, a controversial subject in Hollywood. “Today, everyone is afraid to know where it will lead us,” he said at an event in June (via The Hollywood Reporter). “And in this movie, in Terminator, we’re talking about the machines becoming self-aware and taking over.”
He added : “At that time, we had scratched the surface of AI, of artificial intelligence. Think about it… Over the decades, it has become a reality. So it’s no longer fantasy or a futuristic idea. It is here today. So that’s Jim Cameron’s extraordinary writing.”
Terminator (1984) is streaming on FILMO.
Also discover the famous deleted scene in VO below: