"I would have ruined everything": Ridley Scott refuses to direct Terminator 3 with $20 million fee

Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Gladiator, said that he turned down an eight-figure fee and an offer to direct Terminator 3 because he thought he would “ruin everything.”

Scott believes that this movie is not his genre, just like Bond stories.

After James Cameron’s work on the films “Terminator” (1984) and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), Jonathan Mostow took over the director’s chair. “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines brought back Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside Nick Stahl and Claire Danes, and became a box office and critical success despite having a significantly lower budget than the previous film.

Then the franchise expanded with the films Terminator: Salvation Cometh” (2009), “Terminator: Genisys (2015) and Terminator: Terminator: Judgment Day (2019), all directed by different directors. Also in 2008-2009, Fox released a spinoff series called The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and last year Netflix debuted animated series “Terminator: Zero”.

As for Scott, he continued plans to focus on Gladiator 3 and, perhaps, to return to the Alien franchise with the third prequel, if “a good idea comes up” (despite the fact that he had previously stated that “finished” with the series about aliens). However, all of this is after the release of of the post-apocalyptic thriller Dog Stars led by Margaret Qually and Jacob Elordi.