Ridley Scott Reveals He Turned Down $20 Million to Direct TERMINATOR 3

Seven years after Ridley Scott directed Alien, James Cameron directed the very first sequel to his film with Aliens. According to a report in The Guardian (via Deadline), almost twenty years later, Ridley Scott had the chance to return the favor and direct a follow-up to Cameron’s Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. But the celebrated director said he turned down a twenty-million-dollar payday to take the helm of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, despite the money. Scott said he believed he’d “F*#% it up” by attempting to make it “too real.” Here’s what he had to say:

I’m proud about this. I turned down a $20M fee. See, I can’t be bought, dude. 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: ‘F--- me.’ But I couldn’t do it. It’s not my thing. It’s like doing a Bond movie. The essence of a Bond movie is fun and camp. Terminator [as a franchise] 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 f--- it up.