Ridley Scott has revealed that he turned down a $20 million offer to direct Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
The Oscar-nominated filmmaker recently told The Guardian, “I’m proud about this. I turned down a $20M fee. See, I can’t be bought, dude.”
While the 2003 Arnold Schwarzenegger-led pic was ultimately helmed by director Jonathan Mostow, Scott admitted he did inquire about the lead star’s pay for the third installment before officially declining the offer.
“Someone said: ‘Ask what Arnie gets.’ I thought: ‘I’ll try it out.’ I said: ‘I want what Arnie gets.’ When they said yes, I thought: ‘Fuck me,’” the Gladiator II director recalled.
But even when he learned how much he could earn if he took on the sci-fi action film, Scott said he still “couldn’t do it.” He added, “It’s not my thing. It’s like doing a [James] Bond movie. The essence of a Bond movie is fun and camp. Terminator is pure comic strip. I would try to make it real. That’s why they’ve never asked me to do a Bond movie, because I could fuck it up.”
Terminator 3 follows John Connor (Nick Stahl) as he faces a female Terminator with power over all the machines. But a new Terminator unit, a T-850, is sent back through time to help guide him through the coming battle. The movie grossed more than $433 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation.
While Scott has helmed some sci-fi films of his own, such as Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), he also has interests in the crime and historical epic genres, directing Gladiator (2000), Thelma & Louise (1991), House of Gucci (2021) and Napoleon (2023), among others.
