Knowing well the sources that Bleeding Cool have up their sleeve, I can promise you that their straight-outta-leftfield rumors will always have some kind of foundation. Very interesting, then, that today they’re dishing on a plan to set the fifth Terminator film in contemporary London. I suppose the ultimate accuracy of this story hinges, as much as anything else as there being another Terminator film. To an extent, it will also depend on the same creative team having their way with the next movie, and some might suggest that is now rather unlikely. Nonetheless, the London plan meshes with a previous McG hint quite nicely. That quote, and more, coming after the break.

Back in April, Film Journal ran their Terminator Salvation promo interview. Here’s McG on his plans for a follow up:

I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a 2011. 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.

Hunter Killers laying waste to London? Well.. yes, maybe. McG certainly seems to be in love with Children of Men. I’m not convinced we’ll even be seeing another Terminator film any time soon, but if we do, this is as likely an approach as any other.

London’s a great location for post-apocalyptic landscapes and massive scale destruction, I think. Our architecture looks great with fat wafts of pitch-black smoke swelling up out of it and hordes of screaming, dirt-faced urchins teeming in the rubble. Maybe it’s because these are close to the popular images of the London of yesterday, and not just tomorrow.

There’s quite a tradition of dystopian or post-apocalyptic Londons too, from Children of Men to Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days and Weeks Later, or Will Self’s Book of Dave to A Clockwork Orange. Would be nice to have a Terminator slot into that set too.

One of the great advantages of setting a film in the UK is that we Brits have an enormous wealth of character actors that, for the most part, you don’t see taking up arms against cyborg armies. All the way from Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen to youngsters like Daniel Mays, Riz Ahmed or Harry Treadaway seem like rich, potential Terminator killers to me. Or how about (ahem) Jason Statham?