Exact Reasons These 10 Sequels Were Never Made
3. Bankruptcy Ended The Terminator Salvation Trilogy
The history of the Terminator sequels has been long and sad and terrible, to be honest but it could have been worse because Salvation was supposed to be three films initially.
The plan was to have a trilogy around Christian Bale's John Connor but The Halcyon Company, who held the rights to the franchise were forced to file for bankruptcy in 2009 because of a lawsuit from their financier due to payment problems. Halcyon tried to auction the rights deperately to raise some capital, but their pricetag of $60-70 million was way too high and the highest they got was from Joss Whedon who apparently bid just $10,000 via a tongue-in-cheek open letter to the studio.
Eventually Pacificor - the hedge fund behind Halycon's money troubles - picked up the rights for $29.5 million but had no interest in making a Terminator film, let along the Salvation sequels and by the time Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures bought them from the financiers, plans had fallen away and we got Genisys instead. Good.