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Mattson Tomlin, showrunner on Skydance Animation and Production I.G’s Terminator Zero anime series, revealed on X/Twitter on Friday the series has been canceled and will not have more seasons.
Tomlin’s posts read:
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.
Tomlin also stated, “I would’ve loved to deliver on the Future War I had planned in season’s 2 and 3, but I’m also very happy with how it feels contained as is.” He added he had plans for a full five-season run, and he had written the scripts for season 2 and outlined most of season 3.
Terminator Zero premiered worldwide on Netflix in August 2024.
The series starred Timothy Olyphant as Terminator, André Holland as Malcolm Lee, Rosario Dawson as Kokoro, Sonoya Mizuno as Eiko, and Ann Dowd as The Prophet.
Mattson Tomlin (Project Power, The Batman II) served as the series’ showrunner, executive producer, and writer. Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger were the executive producers. Masashi Kudo directed the anime at Production I.G.
The eight-episode series is part of the Terminator universe, but centers around new characters. Netflix describes the series’ story:
2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children.
Netflix first ordered the series in 2021, and revealed a teaser in November 2023.
Sources: Mattson Tomlin’s X/Twitter account (link 2, link 3), Deadline (Denise Petski)
