Terminator Salvation is still a couple of weeks away from release, but with a fifth Terminator film being greenlit way back in December, director McG is already thinking about where we’ll be going next. He has previously hinted that the ending to Salvation will not be a tidy one, and may in fact divide fans, but now McG is giving us our first clues of where that ending will lead us as we segue into the next movie. The director caught up with Film Journal, and here’s what he had to say:

I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a [pre-Judgment Day] 2011,” McG reveals. “John Connor is going to travel back in time and he’s going to have to galvanize the militaries of the world for an impending Skynet invasion. They’ve figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than one naked entity. So you’re going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be fucking awesome. I also think he’s going to meet a scientist that’s going to look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick [who famously played the T-1000 in Terminator 2], talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as idealized, younger versions of ourselves.

It looks like McG has some pretty cohesive ideas mapped out for this planned trilogy. There’s going to be a minefield of continuity issues he’ll have to look out for as he delves back into time travel, though, so he better have everything planned out to a tee. Hopefully Salvation will be as epic as it’s looked thus far and we can all look forward to McG’s next Terminator film, because boy would it be awkward for all parties involved if Salvation turns out to be a shitshow. I suspect it won’t though, so despite how close the original Terminator films are to my heart, I’m looking forward to how this new era of the universe develops.

Head on over to Film Journal for the rest of the interview, which actually has a lot more info on the upcoming flick, such as how it came to be, how McG approached its creation, and what we can expect when it hits theaters on May 21st.

Tags: McG, Terminator 5, Terminator: Salvation