‘Terminator’ Producer Says James Cameron Cut Key Scene After Financiers Forced Him to Cast Their Friends in It: That ‘Ruined It for Us’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “The Terminator” producer Gale Anne Hurd revealed on X/Twitter that James Cameron removed a crucial scene from the 1984 action movie after financiers forced him to use their friends in it.

The scene in question provided important context about how Cyberdyne Systems, the tech corporation responsible for the creation of Skynet, came into possession of the technological chip that gets placed inside of Terminators. “‘The Terminator’ financier John Daly’s Hemdale Films had an output deal with Orion Pictures, but hadn’t yet made a hit (that changed with our film and ‘Platoon’),” Hurd explained on Twitter/X. “They insisted we use financier friends not actors in this scene, which ruined it for us.” The financier’s friends “were paid as actors, via the Taft Hartley act,” Hurd added. “I think [Daly] insisted they be in the film because the financiers were promised a return on their investment and had yet to receive one.

Daly never believed the film would be a success.” When asked by a fan if Cameron cut the finacniers’ friends out of the movie because they were bad actors, Hurd responded, “Jim (thankfully) was never satisfied with ‘just ok,’ even back then!” Cameron made headlines in July for saying in an interview that he tried to warn the public about the dangers of artificial intelligence back in 1984, referring to “The Terminator.” “Today, everyone is frightened of it, of where this is gonna go,” Cameron’s “Terminator” star Arnold Schwarzenegger also recently said about AI. “And in this movie, in ‘Terminator,’ we talk about the machines becoming self-aware and they take over… Now over the course of decades, it has become a reality.