There comes a time in a creative’s life when all the qualms one might have had around being brutally honest about their career’s highlights, their missed opportunities, and their happily avoided pitfalls seem to slip away. And joining the fray of old auteur’s saying the darnedest things is Alien director Ridley Scott, who just revealed that he was offered beaucoup bucks to direct Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines—but he turned it down.
In an interview with The Guardian, (the outlet for many of these kinds of stories as of late), a reader asked the legendary director if he had considered directing Terminator 3. Scott not only confirmed that it had been a consideration, but revealed that he proudly turned the opportunity down—even though it would’ve paid him $20 million.
“See, I can’t be bought, dude. Someone said: ‘Ask what Arnie gets.’ I thought: ‘I’ll try it out.’ I said: ‘I want what Arnie gets.’ When they said yes, I thought: ‘Fuck me.’ But I couldn’t do it. It’s not my thing. It’s like doing a Bond movie. The essence of a Bond movie is fun and camp. Terminator is pure comic strip. I would try to make it real. That’s why they’ve never asked me to do a Bond movie, because I could fuck it up.”
As GamesRadar+ notes, had Scott taken the money to direct the third Terminator film, it would have led to an interesting synergy in pop culture history between him and The Terminator director James Cameron. Famously, Cameron went on to direct Aliens, so had this alternate history come to pass, Scott and Cameron would have essentially traded batons. But we don’t live in that timeline. In our universe, Terminator 3 wound up being directed by Jonathan Mostow.
Terminator 3 was a tipping point for the franchise, marking a clear dip in quality. And while fans like to debate which of the franchise’s films are the worst, Arnie himself doesn’t consider the third installment all that bad. Speaking with Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen back in June, Schwarzenegger revealed his choice for the worst Terminator movie is the fourth one, Terminator Salvation. His reason? He isn’t in it. While the film, starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington, features the Terminator character, Schwarzenegger did not act in the film. In its final scenes, Bale and Worthington battle a CGI version of Arnie as the Terminator. Schwarzenegger later starred in its other sequels, but we’re pretty confident Scott is tickled pink he didn’t direct any of those, either.
All that being said, Scott, like Cameron, has had a solid run recently, jumping back into his passion projects. While Cameron is locked in for more Avatar sequels, Scott has jumped from making Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, to returning full force to Gladiator—and he is already planning a third installment.
And while Scott has been working on his own films, Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley says Scott has been in communication with him about the Hulu series. Scott has a habit of forming behind-the-scenes partnerships with other Alien projects, including Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez. Certainly, Hawley seems to be in sync with Scott’s goal for the franchise to focus on artificial intelligence, although given Scott’s feelings toward T3, his vision of AI is likely of a very different kind to Terminator‘s killer bots.