TERMINATOR 3

Back in 1997 when Titanic was going way over budget a guy called Bill Mechanic (was then CEO of 20th Century Fox Film Production) panicked and decided to sell of a $ 65M slice of Titanic's budget to Paramount Pictures in return for Paramount to own Titanic's US Home Video rights and the international theatrical distribution rights. It became Mechanics own nuclear nightmare when Titanic made $ 1.2Billion @ the international box office and obviously 20th Cent Fox never got this money so this guy cost them that $ 1.2B plus whatever Titanic made on DVD/VHS in the US. No prizes for guessing that within a year Mechanic lost his job and yet still maintains to this day that he would have made the same choice again with hindsight (yeah right sure he would). Cameron did well as Paramont gave him a $ 120M bonus.

The relevance to T3 and Cameron is that sometime after Titanic became this huge success the Terminator sequel rights were being sold off by Carolco's liquidators to pay their huge debts. Sealed bids were required and Mechanic offered only $ 750.000 (the lowest bid!), while Kassar and Vajna offered $ 7.5M for the rights to make a Terminator sequel even though Cameron had just directed this hugely popular movie. Rumours at the time pointed to Mechanic having some kind of grudge against Cameron as he had been proved correct in spending way over budget on Titanic to perfect the movie to his liking so Mechanic was not going to allow Cameron to make T3 and spend huge again as it would undermine his authority.

When Cameron learnt this he started to distance himself from T3 as he knew he would not be able to call all the shots as someone else (C2 pictures) had the final say and he was not prepared to compromise plus he felt that he had nothing new/worthy to offer.

Back in 1997 when Titanic was going way over budget a guy called Bill Mechanic (was then CEO of 20th Century Fox Film Production) panicked and decided to sell of a $65M slice of Titanic's budget to Paramount Pictures in return for Paramount to own Titanic's US Home Video rights and the international theatrical distribution rights. It became Mechanics own nuclear nightmare when Titanic made $1.2Billion @ the international box office and obviously 20th Cent Fox never got this money so this guy cost them that $1.2B plus whatever Titanic made on DVD/VHS in the US. No prizes for guessing that within a year Mechanic lost his job and yet still maintains to this day that he would have made the same choice again with hindsight (yeah right sure he would). Cameron did well as Paramont gave him a $120M bonus.

The relevance to T3 and Cameron is that sometime after Titanic became this huge success the Terminator sequel rights were being sold off by Carolco's liquidators to pay their huge debts. Sealed bids were required and Mechanic offered only $750.000 (the lowest bid!), while Kassar and Vajna offered $7.5M for the rights to make a Terminator sequel even though Cameron had just directed this hugely popular movie. Rumours at the time pointed to Mechanic having some kind of grudge against Cameron as he had been proved correct in spending way over budget on Titanic to perfect the movie to his liking so Mechanic was not going to allow Cameron to make T3 and spend huge again as it would undermine his authority.

When Cameron learnt this he started to distance himself from T3 as he knew he would not be able to call all the shots as someone else (C2 pictures) had the final say and he was not prepared to compromise plus he felt that he had nothing new/worthy to offer.