Yesterday, we reported on how the financial troubles at MGM were adding a little uncertainty to the future of both The Hobbit and 007 franchises. While, we concluded, there's no way that either wouldn't be going ahead shortly, the issue of who will be funding movies such as these has been brought firmly into focus.

Today, it's the turn of the Terminator franchise. Over at the Los Angeles Times, they've been dissecting the financial problems facing Halcyon Holdings, the company that picked up the rights to the Terminator back in 2007 and produced Terminator: Salvation. The firm is reported to be looking at ways to make itself solvent again, having filed for bankruptcy, and the one big entry on its asset register is the rights to the Terminator.

However, it owns the rights to the Terminator at a time when its standing isn't particularly high. On the small screen The Sarah Connor Chronicles may have notched up impressive reviews, but it failed to garner ratings, and was canned at the end of its second season. That's ended the future of the Terminator on television in the short to medium term, at least, not helped by the price tag required to get a new Terminator show up and running.

Meanwhile, there's Terminator: Salvation, whose worldwide take helped propel it to a global box office take of $371m. Yet its US gross of $125m will have set off warning bells, not least because of the $200m it cost to make the film (before marketing costs). Even though director McG was keen to talk up the idea of a fifth Terminator film earlier this year (Salvation was, after all, supposed to mark the start of a new trilogy), there doesn't seem to have been much appetite to get Terminator 5 up and running (at a time when Star Trek and Iron Man sequels got moving a whole lot quicker).

Halcyon Holdings picked up the Terminator rights for $25m, and it's almost inevitable that it's going to have sell them on at least in part, with financial advisors FTI Capital Advisors telling the L.A. Times that "We think the values are considerably in excess of the purchase price."

The Terminator rights have, of course, been through similar ills before, and the current asking price for them is reported to be in the region of $60m. You would have to assume that, were a studio to stump up that kind of money for them, then the least it would be looking to do would be to make another movie. Whether this would happen soon, or whether it would follow on from Salvation, remains to be seen.

Whoever ends up with the Terminator on their asset register, all this has undeniably put a spanner in the works for the next film, which you can't imagine happening until 2012 at the earliest, unless all concerned get things sorted very quickly indeed. In the meantime, many eyes, you suspect, will be on the DVD and Blu-ray performance of Terminator: Salvation when it starts its roll-out in November.

Los Angeles Times