Despite the Terminator franchise now being comprised of six movies, only the first two are spoken of highly, with each movie chasing that same high ever since. One such attempt was 2015's Terminator Genisys, which, while hinting at things to come, ended after one movie. Well, Patrick Lussier, who co-wrote Terminator: Genisys alongside Laeta Kalogridis, has been discussing the movie, and what would have happened had Genisys been a success.

"We wrote like two drafts of the next one, the direct sequel, and had an outline for the third one, what that would be, that answered all the questions that were presented in Genisys and brought it back around and closed it all off."

While Terminator: Genisys relied heavily on the previous installments (often to its detriment), Lussier added that the sequels would have gone a long way toward separating themselves from the rest of the franchise and branching off in their own direction.

"They were introducing new characters. They dealt more with how the future and where Skynet comes from and what that sort of time loop is. You know, the Matt Smith character. It became much more of a focus, so they were probably a little trippier and stood away from T2 a little more. Started having their own identity. There's sort of an interesting escaping the fatalistic part of it, how it opened was very cool....who knows? Maybe one day they'll release it as a comic or something."

This is not the first time that we have gotten a glimpse at what shape the sequels would have taken, with Terminator: Genisys star Jason Clarke saying some time ago that they would have delved into John Connor's transformation into a Terminator. "What I remember was that second one was going to be about John's journey after he was taken by Skynet," Clarke said at the time, "like going down to what he became; half machine, half man. That's where the second one was going to start, and that's about all I knew."

Terminator Genisys follows the first Terminator's protagonist, Kyle Reese, a soldier in a post-apocalyptic war against Skynet, who is sent from 2029 to 1984 to avert Sarah Connor's death. When Kyle arrives in the past however, he discovers that the timeline has been altered, and that Sarah has been raised by a reprogrammed Terminator. The movie involves a lot of time travel shenanigans, which include our intrepid duo travelling to 2017, as well as the franchise's hero, John Connor, being transformed into a Terminator himself. Despite the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney failed to live up to the legacy of original stars Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in their respective roles, with the movie ultimately falling flat in almost every respect.

While the proposed sequels certainly sound like they would have tried to etch out their own identity within the famous sci-fi franchise, it is perhaps time to leave the Terminator alone for the foreseeable future. This comes to us courtesy of The Production Meeting podcast.