Terminator Zero is an upcoming anime series which will release on Netflix later this summer! Thanks to Entertainment Weekly we have a summer preview, release date and images from the series to share!
Included in the preview, EW shared an interview they conducted with the series' showrunner and executive producer Mattson Tomlin. Read on for some excerpts from their discussion!
The biggest deviation with the anime, however, is the lack of the Connors, namely Sarah and John. Terminator Zero will ditch the core faces of the franchise thus far to focus on a set of wholly original characters. “I think that it’s time to go into new characters and not burden myself with another John and Sarah Connor saga. There's been a run at that a couple of different times," Tomlin says. "There are a lot of callbacks to the other films," he adds. "Fans who really know the movies are going to be doing the Leo meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but it's not going to be as direct as John Connor walks in, because John Connor does not walk in."
The show primarily takes place in Japan in the year 1997, on the cusp of Judgement Day, the pivotal moment when Skynet’s military A.I. network becomes self-aware leading to a decades-spanning war between an endless army of machines and the human survivors. There are still the familiar Terminator beats: A soldier from this hellish future is sent back in time to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee, who is working to launch a competing A.I. system to Skynet.
Tomlin was very much inspired by the first two Terminator movies: 1984’s The Terminator and 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Although a certain rifle-touting robot with a thick Austrian accent and a killer motorcycle jacket might not be popping up in the anime, he wanted to emulate the feeling of uncertainty to who's good and who's bad. Tomlin points to Micheal Biehn’s Kyle Reese in that first movie: “You don't know what's going on with that guy. You do not know that he is the hero.” In a similar way for Terminator Zero, he adds, “These are all original characters. We don't know who anybody is. All of those answers are going to absolutely be revealed — and they'll be revealed pretty quickly.”
All episodes of Terminator Zero will drop on Netflix on August 29th at 3am EST!
Read the entire interview over on Entertainment Weekly!