marcus schenkenberg Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Has any writer ever gotten through an article about the Terminator series without making an "I'll be back" reference? I'm going to give it a shot. As Scott told you a few months back, the merchandising, licensing and film rights to the Terminator franchise were recently sold from producing partners Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna (how'd you like to go through high school with that last name?) to a company called Halcyon. Halcyon formed a corporation called T Asset to make Terminator 4, aiming for a Summer 2009 release. T3 screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Brancato were brought on to write the script. The studio even has designs on making T4 the first film in a whole new Terminator trilogy. But yesterday, Halcyon filed a lawsuit accusing MGM of "wrongful and malicious threats to disrupt T Asset's absolute right to negotiate with other motion picture studios regarding the distribution of T Asset's planned production and distribution of the fourth sequel in the highly valuable Terminator franchise."

So what does that all mean in layman's terms? In a nutshell, T Asset wants MGM to butt out. MGM is claiming that they had "the right to an exclusive 30-day first negotiation with respect to the distribution of T4." Negotiations went over 30 days. T Asset says MGM's negotiating period is expired, MGM disagrees. Boom, pow, you got yourself a Hollywood lawsuit. T Asset also accuses MGM of including the assumed financial success of T4 in economic projections that MGM is using to raise money. Apparently MGM is so high on the prospect of Terminator gold, they offered nearly $200 million dollars for the production and advertising of T4 on June 14th. Look, I love the Terminator movies (the first two anyway), but does anyone really think T4 will be as big a smash as previous installments? James Cameron leaving after T2 hit the series pretty hard, but at least T3 still had Schwarzenegger and it made money. All we know about the cast of T4 is that Marcus Schenkenberg is in it (PLEASE don't let him take over for Arnold), and that name's not going to light up a marquee. IMDb has Edward Furlong rumored to be attached, and I certainly hope they're not banking on Mr. Brainscan putting asses in the seats. They'd have to really up the ante on special effects or something to make this proposed trilogy something that will excite the public. I'm going to grab a sandwich and give this some thought. But...I'll be back. Damn it.

Either it's just another way to drum up interest in someone no one is really talking about, or Marcus Schenkenberg (most folks will remember him as that hottie male model in VH1's The Surreal Life) has just landed a role in Terminator 4. Coming Soon tells us that Schenkenberg was interviewed on the Dutch talk show Jensen! where he informed his legions of fans that he just returned from the Cannes Film Festival where he booked not one, but four new movie roles. Four! The only role we really care about (and the one that the CS scooper mentions) is this so-called part in Terminator 4. Although he did not say who he'll be playing (a sexy robot? a sexy rebel?), the actual interview (in Dutch?) will be available online next week; check back here for all the tasty nuggets of Schenkenberg info.

Another interesting tidbit was that Schenkenberg apparently told Jensen! that Arnold Schwarzenegger will have a 30-second cameo in the sequel. Now, Ahnold has said on numerous occasions that he will have nothing to do with any future Terminator installments, however recent rumors left open the possibility that the Governator could allow filmmakers to use his image in some sort of digitally-created "Look, it's Arnold's face with dialogue from T2!" type of scene. When we last reported on those rumors, it seemed as if Arnold had given the greenlight for that. Yet, later in the day, Cinematical received an email that said all of it was nonsense; that Arnold had not approved of anything like that. So, what are we left with? Nada, really ... unless you're a huge fan of Marcus Schenkenberg. Personally, I cannot see a fourth installment hitting theaters without at least a picture of Arnold as The Terminator appearing at some point during the action. Whether we see more than a picture is up to the man himself; Cinematical will let you know as soon as we hear more.