In 2009, Terminator: Salvation, the first entry in the Skynet saga since 2003’s Rise of the Machines, earned $125 million at the domestic box office and $246 million internationally, thanks in part to the star power of Christian Bale as time-traveling, robot-killing, humanity-saving John Connor. A sequel was a foregone conclusion — filmmakers were planning on creating a whole new trilogy of Terminator movies. Or they were, until producer The Halcyon Company went bankrupt, partially because it couldn’t pay debts owed to a hedge fund called Pacificor. The true idiocy here is whatever complicated financing agreement Halcyon got itself into where $371 million in box office receipts couldn’t cover the $39 million owed to Pacificor. Halcyon executives tried to salvage what they could by selling off the rights to Halcyon’s properties, particularly Terminator.
It valued those at $70 million, a number so high that at first the only major bid was made by Avengers director and cult TV mastermind Joss Whedon. His offer: $10,000. (He said the bid was serious because he “loved the mythology” and the TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but also that the offer was so low because he was “being a dumbass.” For example, he promised he’d give Christian Bale a “throat lozenge” for him to play John Connor again. Later on, Lionsgate put in a bid of $15 million, which Halcyon rejected for being too low (not Whedon low, but still low). Several Hollywood companies then got involved in a bidding war, with the eventual winner being a company called, you guessed it, Pacificor at a price of $29.5 million. (They were behind 2015’s mildly successful Terminator: Genisys.)