Development Although
Terminator Salvation was intended to begin a new
trilogy, the production of a fifth film was put on hold because of legal issues with franchise owner
the Halcyon Company (which filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2009). To avoid bankruptcy, Halcyon later decided to sell the rights to the franchise and valued the property at $70 million. On February 8, 2010, the franchise was auctioned for $29.5 million to Pacificor, a hedge fund which was the largest creditor in Halcyon's bankruptcy proceedings. The deal erased Halcyon's debts to Pacificor and guaranteed Halcyon $5 million for each additional Terminator sequel produced, to pay other outstanding debts. Pacificor sold the franchise again in May 2010. In August of that year,
Hannover House announced plans to develop a 3D animated film titled
Terminator 3000. Pacificor responded with a
cease and desist letter, declining a $20–30 million offer from Hannover for the rights to produce the film. In late April 2011, a proposed
Terminator package, dropping Morgan and adding producer
Robert W. Cort, was presented to
Universal Studios,
Sony,
Lionsgate and
CBS Films.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) had a 30-day right of first refusal to finance and distribute
Terminator 5 since 2006. It was eventually picked up by
Megan Ellison and her production company,
Annapurna Pictures, in May 2011 after they purchased at auction the rights to make at least two more
Terminator films. The deal was finalized on December 4, 2012; the final price was reportedly less than the auction pledge because new copyright laws had raised concerns that the rights would revert to
Terminator creator
James Cameron in 2019. Ellison's brother
David and others from his
Skydance Productions agreed to co-produce the film. After acquiring the rights to the franchise, Megan Ellison asked Cameron for input on the new film. Cameron met several times with David Ellison, where they discussed Schwarzenegger's role and how to remain true to the T-800 character. Director Justin Lin had to leave the project because of his involvement in
Fast & Furious 6. Two screenwriters,
Laeta Kalogridis and
Patrick Lussier, were commissioned to write the screenplay in January 2013.
Paramount Pictures (which has a financing and distribution deal with Skydance) was confirmed as the distributor in June 2013, when they and the producers announced a release date of June 26, 2015.
Rian Johnson,
Denis Villeneuve and
Ang Lee were approached to take over direction from Lin, but
Thor: The Dark World director
Alan Taylor was selected in September 2013.
Storyboard artist Jane Wu, Taylor's girlfriend, urged him to turn down the offer after reading the script, insisting him that he should direct something more personal and that he loved, but Taylor was persuaded and tempted with the prospect of working with Schwarzenegger, who impressed him during their meetings and the chance to build on the legacy of Cameron's franchise respectively. Taylor felt that he should direct the film due to his love for the first two
Terminator films, believing that he could "fix" the script and make the film work. In January 2014, Megan Ellison announced that Annapurna was no longer financing the film; Skydance and Paramount would provide funding while Ellison would be credited as an executive producer.
Casting On June 13, 2013, Schwarzenegger said that he would return for his fourth film as the Terminator. By early November,
Garrett Hedlund was under consideration for the role of Kyle Reese and Taylor wanted
Tom Hardy to portray John Connor. That month the choice for Sarah Connor was narrowed to
Emilia Clarke,
Tatiana Maslany and
Brie Larson, and Clarke was selected in December. Paramount had wanted Larson for the role, but Taylor preferred Emilia Clarke. In December 2013,
Jason Clarke, who is not related to Emilia, was in negotiations to play John Connor. Jason Clarke was David Ellison's first choice for the role. He was impressed by Clarke's performance in Megan Ellison's film
Zero Dark Thirty (2012). In February 2014, the studio considered
Jai Courtney and
Boyd Holbrook as Reese, and later that month Courtney was confirmed for the role.
J. K. Simmons began talks for the role of Detective O'Brien in March. and
Lee Byung-hun,
Michael Gladis and
Sandrine Holt joined the cast (Lee in a key role).
Matt Smith was confirmed as a cast member in May, followed by
Douglas Smith in June.
Writing The film's producers, David Ellison and Dana Goldberg, worked with writers Kalogridis and Lussier to devise the story. Kalogridis and Lussier were invited to write the script while they worked on another project with Ellison and Goldberg. They agreed to write a
Terminator film when Cameron, a friend of Kalogridis who worked with her on
Avatar, gave it his blessing. The starting point of the script was to retain Schwarzenegger as a central character, unlike the
Star Trek reboot with
Leonard Nimoy as an older
Spock in a minor role. They had to write in the actor (now 67 years old) and followed a suggestion by Cameron that the Terminator's living-tissue exterior was vulnerable to
aging and their idea of Skynet sending a Terminator after an infant Sarah Connor. Kalogridis and Lussier extended this to the core characters of Kyle, Sarah and John Connor, despite each being from a different time period. Although the writers reportedly enjoyed
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, they opted to escape its suggestion that
Judgment Day is inevitable because of a
causal loop in favor of all
Terminator timelines existing simultaneously in a
multiverse. To map out the timelines and plot, Kalogridis and Lussier had five
whiteboards "covering every wall in the office". They eventually reached a central plot thread in which the Skynet of one universe, defeated in several timelines, sent the T-5000 to the
Genisys timeline hoping to defeat the humans by "having the best weapon that humans have": John Connor. The first draft of the screenplay, to attract a director, was delivered in July 2013. Few changes were made to the script from that point onward. One expansive scene that was removed from the final script would have explained what Sarah Connor's life was like with Pops. Concepts from the second movie, such as the T-1000, are featured, but its events are disregarded; the 2029 that is depicted in
Genisys is one in which the attack on the Cyberdyne building either had no effect on Skynet's development or did not happen at all, as August 29, 1997 is still the date of Judgment Day in that timeline. David Ellison described the film and its intended film trilogy as standalone projects based on Cameron's original
Terminator films. The film features seven different time periods, with 1984 and 2017 being the primary setting for the story. He also described the original
Terminator film as a love story and the second as a father/son story and said that
Genisys would be a combination of the two ideas, including a focus on the aspect of a dysfunctional family. David Ellison said the film was inspired by the idea of
technological singularity,
Filming Principal photography began on April 21, 2014, in
New Orleans. The film shot under the code name
Vista, a possible reference to the Terminator's "
hasta la vista" line in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In addition, Taylor explained that the original footage would not look right with the rest of the film due to its grain quality. The sequence was shot within the first two weeks of filming. Matheson had initially searched for a pair of the sneakers, but the ones that she came across did not look new enough for the scene. Matheson eventually spoke to Paramount, which convinced Nike to produce 25 pairs of Vandal sneakers for the film. For the future soldiers, arm and shoulder pieces were made of rubber car mats which had been cut up and aged to simulate makeshift armor that the soldiers had salvaged. To prepare for his role, Jason Clarke observed
Edward Furlong's performance as John Connor in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. For a scene in which John Connor delivers a motivational speech to his troops, Jason Clarke referred to passages from
Hamlet,
Henry V and a
Steve Jobs speech. Courtney watched the previous
Terminator films for context and inspiration, but did not seek to replicate the performances of actors who portrayed Kyle Reese in those films. Clarke also went through training for scenes involving weapons and stunts and had to change her hair color for the role. Clarke, who is from the UK, adopted an American accent. Willa Taylor. Filming in New Orleans included NASA'S
Michoud Assembly Facility, where a set was constructed to portray part of the Cyberdyne facility's interior, as well as its time machine. Filming at the Oracle headquarters, including interior scenes, took place at the end of July 2014. In early August 2014, filming took place at the
Bay Bridge and
Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. One scene features a school bus that is flipped through the air while driving on the Golden Gate Bridge. A 500-foot-long replica of the bridge was built in New Orleans for the shot involving the bus flip, something that was done without visual effects. On August 6, 2014, it was announced that filming had concluded and that the official title would be
Terminator Genisys rather than
Terminator Genesis. Ellison later said about the film's
Genisys title, "It didn't work. The actual thought process behind it was, we were kind of playing on words a la
Google. And it's in reference to genesis, which is in reference to the singularity and the man-machine hybrid that John Connor ends up beginning. Also, if you pronounce it a different way it signals a new beginning. So it was kind of a play on words and it did not come across that way." At one point during post-production, the mid-credits scene was included at the end of the film, before the credits. Taylor decided to make it a mid-credits scene after getting reactions from test audiences.
Visual effects Visual-effects supervisor Janek Sirrs oversaw approximately 1,200 visual-effects shots generated at
Double Negative,
Moving Picture Company (MPC),
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Lola VFX, One of Us and
Method Studios. MPC's most elaborate effect was the digital recreation of the original Terminator, which required 12 months for 35 shots (completed 30 minutes before the final print was submitted to the studio).
Performance capture was used only for facial animation, since Schwarzenegger was scanned reading his lines. The studio's artists studied archive footage of the actor, focusing mainly on
The Terminator and
Pumping Iron and were given a 1984
plaster cast of him. On set, the fight between both Terminators had Schwarzenegger and Brett Azar (a bodybuilder chosen for his resemblance to the actor in 1984) and, in more dangerous scenes, Azar and a stunt double—requiring effects artists to replace the face of Pops. ==Music==