40 Years Ago, James Cameron's First Sci-Fi Classic Was A Surprise Box Office Smash

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(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

James Cameron is the unquestioned king of the box office. "Avatar" is, by a considerable margin, the highest-grossing movie of all time and, before all's said and done, it could be the only movie in history to touch $3 billion worldwide. Cameron also owns two of the other spots in the top four globally with "Avatar: The Way of Water" and "Titanic." He's been doing it on the biggest scale for a long, long time. But it certainly didn't start out that way. Early on, the blockbuster maestro was simply looking for a way to meaningfully break into Hollywood.

"My contemporaries were all doing slasher-horror movies. John Carpenter was the guy I idolized the most," Cameron once admitted (per Den of Geek). "He made 'Halloween' for $30,000 or something. That was everyone's break-in dream, to do a stylish horror movie." As fate would have it, Cameron once had a terrifying dream that would inform his own stylish sci-fi movie, one that plays out like a slasher film. "It was a very slasher film type image. And it really was the launching pad for the story," Cameron said of the dream that informed his 1984 breakout hit "The Terminator."

Funnily enough, Carpenter's "Halloween" was largely influenced by a sci-fi classic, namely "Westworld." As such, Cameron's North Star for his own journey into the realm of genre filmmaking made more sense than it might seem on the surface. In any event, that little dream of Cameron's would prove to be an incredibly lucrative one. Not just because this movie was a hit, but also because it was a launching pad for one of the most impactful careers in Hollywood history.

In this week's Tales from the Box Office, we're looking back at "The Terminator" in honor of its 40th anniversary. We'll go over how Cameron's experience on his first film led him to this one, how he secured funding, why it was hard to convince the film's key star to sign on, what happened when it reached theaters, and what lessons we can learn from it in a modern context. Let's get into it, shall we?

The movie: The Terminator

"The Terminator" as we know it centers on a human soldier who is sent from the future back to 1984. His mission? Stop an almost indestructible cyborg designed to kill, who is also from the future. The so-called T-800 has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's salvation. Even if it was by accident, the general premise is similar to a classic one from the pages of Marvel Comics: the acclaimed "X-Men" story "Days of Future Past."

Before this fateful dream, Cameron made his feature directorial debut with 1982's low-budget horror flick "Piranha II: The Spawning," which was a true nightmare for the filmmaker. It's this experience, which saw creative control ripped from Cameron's hands, that led him to try and take more control over the future of his career. So, with the help of producer Gale Anne Hurd, he set about turning his creepy dream into a screenplay. Once that was done, it was all about securing funding. No easy task for an untested filmmaker whose only film up to that point was, to put it politely, not very good.

They wound up on Orion Pictures' door and the studio, whose previous credits included "Caddyshack" and "First Blood," was willing to put up the money. The final budget was a little over $6 million. The one condition? Orion felt the premise was good, but that it needed a star to sell it. The star it originally had in mind? Buffalo Bills running back turned actor O.J. Simpson. It was a different time, to say the least of it.

Simpson, who was a huge star for the NFL and was a budding player in Hollywood thanks to minor roles in films like "The Towering Inferno" as well as a series of popular ads for Hertz, made sense at the time. He would eventually be put on trial for the alleged murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. He was found not guilty, though later found liable in a civil suit. It's hard to separate that now but, before all of that, Simpson had the makings of an A-lister.

Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes The Terminator - with some convincing

Cameron didn't see Simpson in the titular role. For Sarah Connor, he cast Linda Hamilton ("Children of the Corn"), with Michael Biehn ("The Runaways") eventually taking on the role of the time traveler Kyle Reese. Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy originally suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger ("Hercules in New York") as Reese. That led to a fateful meeting between Cameron and Schwarzenegger, even though the director didn't see him as Reese. Once they met, however, Cameron had a vision. As he explained in a 2014 interview:

"I was studying him at the restaurant, just watching the light from the window on his face and thinking, 'Holy crap, what a face! Forget the Reese thing. Arnold would make a hell of a Terminator.'"

"I was building my career, being a leading man and not being a villain," Schwarzenegger said in 2014, explaining why he initially had no interest in playing the Terminator. The now-world-famous action star also expressed concern over the robot's lack of dialogue. Coming off of "Conan the Barbarian," the bodybuilder-turned-actor had designs on being a leading man. Being a brooding villain with very few lines? Schwarzenegger, understandably, didn't see that as the best move at first.

Fortunately, Cameron convinced him to sign on and the key pieces of the puzzle were in place. That doesn't mean it was smooth sailing. Schwarzenegger had just 17 lines, totaling 58 words. But the most famous of them all is "I'll be back," which was a line that the actor tried to change. "I was not comfortable with saying 'I'll.' I said, 'I think it's stronger to say, 'I will be back," Schwarzenegger explained in a 2023 interview. "Cameron said, 'Are you the scriptwriter now? It's just one word. Don't tell me how to write. I don't tell you how to act.'"

Cameron was right, it turned out. Meanwhile, Hurd and Cameron also had to fight against giving "The Terminator" a happy ending. "We got notes to end the film before the end of the film," Hurd explained at a Q&A in 2018. "Not even have The Terminator rise out as the endoskeleton, but just end with Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor hugging." Once again, mercifully, this was a battle they won, and Orion would be quite happy before long with the hard-fought battle that was getting this movie made.

The Terminator's financial journey

Without any A-list stars, the marketing for "The Terminator" leaned heavily on the imposing, intriguing nature of its lead character, as well as Cameron's convincing futuristic visuals. The Terminator's metal exoskeleton, in particular, was effective. It also didn't hurt that Brad Fiedel's very unique, synth-driven score was unlike anything else out there at the time. It all made for a very marketable film, even if there wasn't a ton of faith in this project going in.

"The Terminator" opened in theaters on October 26, 1984, debuting on just over 1,000 screens in North America. To the surprise of Orion (and likely Cameron), the sci-fi flick topped the charts with a $4.02 million opening. It narrowly beat "Terror of the Aisles" ($4 million), but that movie was playing on more screens, as was Brian De Palma's "Body Double" ($2.8 million). So, not only did the film open atop the charts, but it also had a higher per-screen average than the weekend's other newcomers.

To that end, the following weekend, Cameron's breakout hit once again topped the charts with $4.2 million, adding more than 100 screens as demand grew. Mind you, this was a different time; waiting to watch the film at home would take months, and while VHS was becoming popular, we were still years away from the peak of the home video boom. That's why movies could hang around in theaters for weeks on end. That being the case, "Terminator" didn't fall out of the top five until mid-December. It was a home run.

"The Terminator" finished its domestic run with $38.3 million. Over the years, it's also pulled in more than $40 million internationally for a grand total of $78.3 million worldwide (or, to put it another way, more than 12 times its reported production budget). That's to say nothing of VHS sales, eventual DVD sales, merchandise, cable rights, and all of the other ancillary revenue that has come in since the film's initial release. Orion made a fortune, and the film made Cameron into a star behind the camera.

The Terminator turns James Cameron into a star director

In the aftermath of the film's success, Cameron managed to convince Fox to make a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic box office hit "Alien." Cameron's "Aliens" similarly became a huge success, helping pave the way for a franchise that is still going strong to this day. After making the very ambitious "The Abyss," the filmmaker returned to the "Terminator" universe for 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," which was infinitely bigger in every way, taking in a staggering $515 million worldwide. While none of the other sequels have been as successful, "Terminator" is now a $2 billion franchise.

Rather crucially, the film helped launch Schwarzenegger's career as an action star, with the actor headlining films such as "Commando," "Predator," "The Running Man," and "Total Recall," among many others. Schwarzenegger was even able to pivot to comedy with "Twins," which netted him the biggest payday of his career, amazingly enough. He also reunited with Cameron once again in 1994 for "True Lies," which made history as the first film with a $100 million budget. Fortunately, it was another hit for Cameron. Hurd also became a huge producer on the back of this unexpected success.

The point is, Cameron's bizarre, scary dream, and his pursuit of making his version of a slasher film, did more than just produce a single hit; it also launched the careers of several Hollywood titans. The amount of box office dollars that can be traced back to this film are innumerable, but it's in the billions — if not tens of billions. It's an enormously consequential film, in addition to being a cherished classic of the sci-fi genre.

What we can learn from The Terminator

Looking back, particularly in the version of Hollywood that exists, there is a big, clear lesson here when it comes to the future of cinema. Cameron doesn't eventually make "Avatar," which became the biggest movie ever not once, but twice, unless Orion takes a chance on his original vision. Nor does he make "Titanic," which went on a record-shattering tear at the box office in 1997-1998. It all goes back to that small studio betting on his original idea.

At that time, established IP and franchise plays weren't all the rage like they are today. So, Hollywood was more willing to give somewhat untested directors a chance. It certainly wasn't easy to get a film made (it never is), but it was easier to get an original idea across the finish line — one that had a healthy enough budget to accomplish more than the lowest of low-budget concepts. Unfortunately, in the modern era, ultra-low-budget filmmaking is one of the only ways many directors can do what Cameron did 40 years ago.

"The Terminator" made a star out of Cameron, who went on to influence cinema in a tremendous way. The film also helped turn Schwarzenegger into one of the most unlikely movie stars in history, and one who had a huge impact on popular cinema in the '80s and '90s. Hurd, meanwhile, not only produced many of Cameron's films and other entries in this franchise, but she's also one of the key figures behind the "Walking Dead" universe. Again, a massive, impactful figure in Hollywood history stemming from this film.

In short? Hollywood must return to the regular practice of investing in original ideas from new voices. Give directors a chance to show what they can do. Give new actors a chance to emerge. This is how talent is fostered. This is how the next generation of great films — and future franchises — is born. Sure, let Cameron make that new "Terminator" movie he's talking about, but also give the person whose name we don't know yet a chance to show what they can do.

Am I saying give these untested filmmakers tens of millions to make some arthouse picture? Of course not. But be open to investing several million into a concept with potential commercial prospects, even if it is a little outside the box office. Reboots and existing IP can't sustain the business forever.