After quite the hunt to complement the new Connor family in next year’s Terminator movie reboot, Terminator: Genesis, father of the resistance’s champion, Kyle Reese has been cast! He’ll be portrayed by Jack Reacher and A Good Day to Die Hard actor, Jai Courtney, who narrowly beat out The Host’s Boyd Holbrook for the coveted role.
Courtney would appear to lock in the final protagonist role for Terminator: Genesis, which will also see Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke play Sarah Connor, and Zero Dark Thirty’s Jason Clarke (no relation) portray champion of the future’s human resistance, John Connor. Ironically, Emilia Clarke’s Game of Thrones co-star, Lena Headey also portrayed Sarah Connor, in the disappointingly short-lived television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Game of Thrones and Thor: The Dark World helmer, Alan Taylor will direct.
Terminator: Genesis will also see Arnold Schwarzenegger return to one of the roles that made him an action superstar way back in 1984 with the release of The Terminator, where he played the titular villain, and later a supporting protagonist in its sequels, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. It is believed that he will continue to provide the face of the T-800 robots, and may even portray a human character that leads to that potential likeness.
Terminator: Genesis is the series reboot that resulted from a mess of legal troubles that ultimately prematurely cancelled the planned Terminator Salvation trilogy, which told the story of the future war against rogue A.I. and terminator master, Skynet, but was only able to detail this in one movie of a planned three. Another reboot was planned, an animated 3D reboot in fact, by studio, Hanover House, dubbed Terminator 3000. Unfortunately, this movie was blocked from production because Hanover House didn’t have the proper filmmaking rights to use the Terminator license.
The plot of Terminator: Genesis is being kept very heavily under wraps, but it’s believed to potentially be an alternate-timeline saga that will allow the old canon to stand apart while starting anew, similar to the recent Star Trek reboot movies. It is expected that plot details will be revealed soon, given that the movie is just over a year away.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Terminator franchise, though Terminator: Genesis won’t be arriving on the big screen until July 1st, 2015.
Keep tracking Eggplante for all of your updates related to the Terminator movies.