Well, not terminated… stalled. But a man’s gotta have some alliteration in his headline.

Deadline is reporting that there is a legal snafu with Terminator 3000, a $70 million 3D animated reboot that was announced by Hannover House to be produced in conjunction with Vancouver-based Red Bear Entertainment. All this was news to Pacificor, the company that owns the rights to the Terminator franchise. So Pacificor has sent a cease and desist letter to Hannover’s CEO Eric Parkinson (the letter can be read over at Deadline, if you’re into legal documents). Parkinson once ran the home video division of Hemdale, makers of the original Terminator, and he claims that he has certain proprietary rights which allow him to make the film:

“The animation rights were excluded when Hemdale sold Terminator to Carolco and when I left Hemdale, part of my settlement was that I got those rights,” Hannover told me. “However, the way the rest of the contractual rights are written, it would be dangerous for us to do this without Pacificor’s approval. They have certain intellectual rights. The best way to put it is,  they can’t make an animated film without me, and we might not be able to make it without them. We are in discussions with WME, and hope we can deal with this expeditiously.”

“We’ve arranged a meeting, we’ll show them our money and if the rational brain prevails, they’ll take the deal. If not, I can’t do it without them. You’ll have a followup next week that we are either holding  hands, or not doing the film. At least we now have our meeting. I hope they will can think outside the box, because if we can make a movie that delivers a $20 million to $30 million rights payment, that is an income source they didn’t realize was possible. If not, it was a good idea anyway.”

A 3D animated Terminator? Sure, whatever. Between T3 and McTerminator and The Sarah Connor Chronicles it’s not like there’s a lot of sanctity left here. Maybe if they make enough Terminator films we’ll accidentally get a good one.