More Details On Cancelled “Terminator Zero”
Late last week came the news that Netflix had officially cancelled the 2024 anime series “Terminator Zero” after one season.
Creator Mattson Tomlin, who is co-writing the upcoming “The Batman Part II,” revealed the news on social media. At the time, he said the “critical and audience reception to it was tremendous”, but just not enough people watched it.
Though relatively self-contained, he also hinted that he had planned out at least two further seasons. In the days since, he has followed that quote up with more details on what the original plans for the show were.
It seems five seasons in all were planned, and he got fairly far on the scripts for further episodes. He also doesn’t blame Netflix, calling them a great partner:
“Maybe someday I’ll do a big thread about the plans I had for the full five-season run. The series finale was special, and it was part of my pitch to get the job. I’ve written all of the season two scripts and outlined pretty much all of season three.
Netflix was really great about supporting the show and giving me tremendous creative freedom to do what I wanted to do. Good partners. The show was expensive and very time-consuming. The only way they could justify it was if the audience showed up for it, and they just didn’t.
I’ll also say they offered to let me do 2, maybe 3 episodes more to wrap up the story, which I declined. I felt the story I wanted to tell was much longer, and the finale of season one actually left things in a good place. But they didn’t have to offer that. Good partners here.”
Asked at one point if Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 would come into play, he said: “Sort of. If we got to season 4, it was something that could’ve been explored in a way that didn’t hijack the balance of things… I never wanted the show to feel like it was leading to that.”
The English-dubbed cast of the series included Timothy Olyphant as The Terminator, Rosario Dawson as Kokoro, André Holland as Malcolm Lee, Sonoya Mizuno as Eiko, and Ann Dowd as The Prophet.