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The rights to the Terminator franchise have only been up on the auction block for about as long as it takes Arnold Schwarzenegger to emerge naked from a time bubble, but a veteran Hollywood mogul has already expressed interest in taking the brand off the hands of the now-bankrupt Halcyon; and that vet is none other than Toy Story, Alien: Resurrection, and Titan A.E. screenwriter Joss Whedon (oh, and he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and "Firefly"/Serenity, but I don't think anyone has ever heard of those).

Mr. Whedon took the time out of his busy schedule running his latest TV show, the Eliza Dushku starring "Dollhouse", to write an earnest letter to Halcyon making the case for why he's the right man for the job. And as with all things Whedon, his proposal has its fair share of the funny.

In it, he outlines the six possible directions he'd take the franchise, which range from simply adding more Summer Glau ("There's a reason they're called "Summer" movies.") to sending a Terminator to Middle Earth ("because he's a cyborg and he doesn't give a s#&% about the ring -- it has no power over him! And he can carry it AND Frodo AND Sam AND f@%& up some orcs while he's doing it. This stuff just comes to me. I mean it.").

Now his opening bid of $10,000 may be a smidge lower than the estimated $200,000 Halcyon is asking for the rights, but with a formal business plan as detailed as Whedon's, I'd be flabbergasted if they turned it down. Read on to check out the full letter, which may or may not contain similar offers to also buy Batman and Lord of the Rings.

Back in August, we reported that the Terminator franchise was in some serious legal and financial trouble. The rights are currently owned by the Halcyon Company, who have managed to make more court appearances than they have films. They were in danger of losing the rights to their hedge fund, Pacificor, who was poised to claim them if Halcyon defaulted on their loan.

But according to The Financial Times, Halcyon has now filed for bankruptcy after their lawsuit with Pacificor, and is selling off the rights to Terminator. It would appear that filing for Chapter 11 afforded their precious franchise some protection from the hedge fund, and they can now sell it to bail themselves out. The sale will be conducted by FTI Capital Advisors, and does not cover rights to the earlier Terminator films.

The Times notes that this auction is coming at a particularly tough time for Hollywood, who is feeling the economic crunch just like everyone else. But it notes that Terminator is one of the rare "blockbuster brands" not controlled by a big studio, and that alone has may drooling at the chance to control future properties. Summit is said to be particularly interested (they can probably pay for it just out of Twilight proceeds), as is Sony and Media Rights Capital. But remember, this is America! Everyone has a chance at destroying mankind, and if you have millions (estimates put the sale beyond $60 million, the benchmark set by the sale of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), you can buy them for yourself. I would have faith in something other than John Connor if a Cinematical reader took the reins of this franchise.

[via Cinema Retro]

Every now and then we'll throw our fanatical shirt-making friends over at Dutch Southern a little love because those cats are always coming up with some cool, refreshing and totally random movie-related t-shirt that I simply must have. Yes, I'm a movie t-shirt guy -- as are a lot of my movie bloggin' colleagues -- and there's always been this unspoken competition amongst us to see who can show up at the next film festival or set visit with the freshest, most fanboy-esque movie t-shirt. And the shirts also make for great conversation starters. In fact, I wore my John Carpenter character shirt to an Extract screening and found myself talking to Mike Judge about it for awhile as he tried to figure out which character was from which flick.

So, that being said, the peeps at Dutch have released their latest t-shirt, called Product Placement -- and basically it includes a whole bunch of fictional corporate logos from a wide array of films. Some of the company logos included on the shirt are Cyberdyne Systems (Terminator), Paper Street Soap Company (Fight Club), Spatula City (UHF), S-mart (Army of Darkness), Doc Hopper's Frog Legs (The Muppet Movie), Hudsucker Industries (The Hudsucker Proxy), ICS (Running Man) and so many more. The shirt was designed by Josh Eacret, it costs $19 and you can head after the jump for a complete list of company logos featured.

Click image below for a larger version of the t-shirt, and pick one up for yourself right here.

Some people might be wowing over Avatar and the blue-skinned peeps, but in the world of science fiction, I always dug what lurked underneath a whole lot more. Adding to the skin is tricky -- trying to make a hideous scar, a bald noggin, or a blue tinge look realistic always seemed a lot trickier than revealing what was trapped beneath the surface -- the robotic limbs ripping through torn flesh, or even the illusion of skin that masked some other sort of ugly truth.

So, while others might muse over the distinct details given to James Cameron's blue-skinned avatars, I can't help but stare at the image to the right from the upcoming Bruce Willis movie Surrogates. (Check out the larger version at Arrow in the Head.) My eyes keep following the teeth as they become hidden under the lips, the whites of the eye usually obscured by the eyelid. I imagine my attraction is due to the fact that while we may not all be robots underneath our skin, take away that outer layer and suddenly we look a little alien.

But still, there's something much cooler about revealing a piece of metallic hardware rather than a human's musculature -- whether it's the cold, hard metal of Terminator, or even special sunglasses revealing the aliens in They Live!

What's your favorite inhuman revelation, where the skin hides something unexpected?

Warning: This is going to get a little 'spoilery', so if you haven't seen Terminator Salvation you might want to bookmark this baby for later.

It was the moment we were all waiting for this summer season: the resurrection of Terminator. The trailers were looking good, there was a Nolan in charge of rewrites, and for god's sake we even had Batman as John Connor -- how could this go wrong? Well, if you happened to catch the movie over the weekend you know just how wrong it was. It's time to play Monday-morning quarterback in the aftermath of one of this summer's biggest letdowns, and so let's try to answer one question: whose fault was it?

McG
There might be plenty of votes for McG as the culprit. He doesn't have the greatest track record for quality films, but I thought he pulled off a much better movie than expected. The cut-happy editing of Charlie's Angels was long gone and he had some great action set pieces, but that doesn't mean he made a good film. All of his trademark flaws were on display: uneven pacing, character motivations are glossed over or not even addressed; not to mention some stunning gaps in logic -- mainly: can someone explain to me why a techno-overlord like Skynet would build a machine that they can't control?

After the jump; find out who else earned the last three nominations...

Just days after reports surfaced that Warner Bros. is bidding on Midway Games, which filed for Chapter 11 in February, and also took over the rights to EA's Lord of the Rings video game franchise*, Variety is reporting that the studio is getting ready to jump into the iPhone game.

Sony, Paramount, and Warner Bros. have all been vying for attention from mobile gamers with releases like a Star Trek comic book app, an Angels and Demons video game app, and more. However, according to Warner Digital Distribution director of worldwide marketing Stephanie Bohn, WB is planning to release about 40 iPhone applications by the end of the year. WB just released a Terminator comic app tied to the opening of Terminator: Salvation and has more in the works for upcoming releases, as well as ideas for "animated episodic video apps and other apps built around Warner brands."

As a recent survey by marketing research team NPD showed, more people are playing video games than going to the movies, and one distinct reason the numbers are rising isn't just the price of movie tickets. The numbers of casual video game players is increasing exponentially, partially due to the popularity, ease, and increasing quality of games available on iPhones and other handhelds. If movie studios get involved directly with video game developers, will the video game tie-ins improve? And as Bohn points out, "It doesn't cost a lot to launch an app... Relative to a TV show or a film, it's nothing." So, could this new strategy also mean good news for studios' sagging bottom lines (and for iPhone gaming addicts)?

* Gamers are already suspicious of the newest Lord of the Rings game, Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, because it's being billed as family-friendly. EA's license for the franchise expired and reverted back to New Line, thus Warner Bros.

We sincerely hope you're enjoying Memorial Day -- eating BBQ, attending a parade, watching some movie marathon on network television and cursing every time a commercial comes on. After all, that's what long holiday weekends are all about! But if for some reason you're spending the day cruising around online, then here's a funny little video for you to watch. IGN cut up their own trailer mash-up for a film they're calling The Transforminators, which is part Terminator, part Transformers and part hilarious randomness. Watch as John Connor fights machines, then fights even more machines while Shia LaBeouf turns into a machine, and, um, yeah -- it's all over the place. Pretty funny stuff; the Connor voiceover is solid ("It was bad enough when we were fighting the Terminators. But then the Transformers came. Now we just call them the Transforminators.") and I dug the way they worked in Christian Bale's crazy on-set tirade. Good on you IGN! Check it out below.

If Star Trek weren't the final nail in the coffin of cinematic time-travel believability, Terminator Salvation arrives in theaters this week with an all-new albeit pre-existing series of space-time conundrums. The new film, directed by McG (We Are Marshall) from a screenplay by John Brancato, Michael Ferris and an uncredited Jonah Nolan (among other ghost writers), takes place in 2018, 11 years before John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to save and impregnate his mom. But how – if at all – does Salvation fit into the rest of the series' fractured chronology?

Cinematical started at the beginning, as it were, and decided to offer a timeline of the events that take place in the Terminator series. Assuming that James Cameron's original Terminator was the centrifuge from which the rest of the films' stories were spun – not counting the TV series – check out the checkered history we put together for The Terminator and its time-troubled mythology.

Not despite Charlie's Angels, but because of it (the first one, anyway), I really like McG as a filmmaker. Say what you want about his undeservedly but oft-criticized nickname, but the guy has the chops – and then some – to make blockbuster spectacle look, well, spectacular. Given his existing filmography, he's only made one serious creative misstep, the disastrous Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, since the first Angels movie was an exhilarating thrill ride and 2006's We Are Marshall a heartfelt and powerful drama.

Aiming for the A-list credibility enjoyed by the likes of Christopher Nolan, McG has unleashed his muscular, bombastic creativity on Terminator Salvation, which should certainly resuscitate the franchise even if it doesn't quite distinguish the director from other fanboy punching bags like Michael Bay and Brett Ratner. As part of Cinematical's special Summer Interview Series with different directors, we sat down with McG at the film's Los Angeles press day for an exclusive chat about reimagining Terminator's beloved characters. In addition to talking about defining the director's own filmmaking style and searching through summers past to find the films that inspired him to become a director, McG drilled us a little bit about our own feelings on the film, precipitating one of the more interesting, and, well, interactive interviews we've done in a while.