McG Says Christian Bale Originally Rejected The Idea Of ‘Terminator Salvation’

An interesting story. After McG met with James Cameron to explain his “Terminator Salvation” intentions, the prickly “Titanic” director wasn’t as warm and fuzzy as he’d hoped and didn’t give the project his blessing either, but he did at least wish the director well.

“I got Jim… I wouldn’t say Jim’s on board, but I’m getting ready to show him the movie soon and we’ll see, he might kick me in the balls and tell me to fuck right off.” McG said after their meeting he knew the stakes were raised and, “I knew we needed a good actor and I [needed] to get Bale.”

But McG says Christian Bale rejected the idea and even hated the initial draft of the script they had. It sounds like he even dismissed McG’s past and the film’s he’s known for.

“I fly to England and he’s doing ‘The Dark Knight’ and he comes in and he doesn’t like the script and he says, ‘Look man, I don’t want to make a loud action film with explosions and I know you’ve done your thing visually with these films in the past, but I don’t care about that. What I care about is story and character and how can you articulate what the difference of John Connor at the beginning of this picture and John Connor at the end of this picture?’ So we start talking and we agree to work on the script so we can get it a place where it can be read cold and ideally where we can entertain [to make an idea] like this. But it wasn’t’ there so he said, let’s get Jonathan [Nolan], he’s a smart guy, he doesn’t bullshit around, and he puts story first. So we worked with him very diligently, and I wanted to build a world that honored the fan-base and to me that’s not just actors on stages with green-screen and C-stands with tennis balls and having people try to emote.”

Sounds good, but as noted on the more devoted geek sites, the “Terminator Salvation” script has gone through a number of iterations and multiple writers. Screenplays by committee are never ideal, so again, it’s slightly worrisome. But Bale probably wouldn’t agree to any of until there was a good, dramatic script in place, yes? Let’s hope so. [ed. for those about to cry a river, don’t worry: this concludes “Terminator Salvation” week on The Playlist, as you were].