Ridley Scott Walked Away From $20 Million Terminator 3 Deal: 'It's Not My Thing'

Classic studio power move foiled by a director who knows exactly what he does and doesn’t want to do.

The $20 million no

During a reader Q&A with The Guardian, Scott said the offer ballooned fast once someone told him to ask for what Arnold Schwarzenegger was making. The wild part: the studio said yes. And he still passed.

"I turned down a $20m fee... Someone said: 'Ask what Arnie gets.' I said: 'I want what Arnie gets.' When they said yes, I thought: 'Fuck me.' But I couldn't do it. It's not my thing."

He explained that his sensibilities don’t really line up with that franchise. In his words, Bond is meant to be fun and camp, Terminator plays like pure comic strip, and he’d inevitably try to make it too real. He even joked that’s why nobody asks him to do a Bond movie: he’d "fuck it up."

What we got instead (and the poetic almost)

Jonathan Mostow ended up directing Terminator 3. If Scott had taken it, there would’ve been some neat symmetry: James Cameron, who made the first two Terminator films, directed Aliens — the sequel to Scott’s Alien. A Scott-directed T3 would’ve been a weirdly poetic loop between the two filmmakers’ signature franchises.

So what is Scott doing?

Plenty. He says a third Gladiator is happening and "in process" now. He’s also open to another Alien prequel if the right idea hits.

Quick Gladiator 2 check-in

Gladiator 2 came out last year, picking up the story from the original but shifting focus to Maximus’s son, played by Paul Mescal. Some familiar faces returned, and the new lineup was stacked:

• Paul Mescal as the lead, playing Maximus’s son
• Returning: Derek Jacobi and Connie Nielsen
• Newcomers: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn

Alien is alive and crawling on TV

Over on the xenomorph side, the franchise is still moving with Alien: Earth on Disney Plus — the first Alien TV series. Scott is on board as an executive producer.