Movie Description
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (also known as T3) is a 2003 science fiction action film, the third installment in the Terminator franchise and a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, and Kristanna Loken. In the film, Skynet sends a Terminator, the T-X (Loken), back in time to ensure the rise of machines by killing top members of the future human resistance, which will be led by John Connor (Stahl). Among the T-X's targets is John's future wife Kate Brewster (Danes), but not John himself, as his whereabouts are unknown to Skynet. John's life is placed in danger when the T-X finds him. The Resistance has also sent its own Terminator (Schwarzenegger) back in time to protect John and Kate.
By the end of 1995, James Cameron was interested in directing a third Terminator film. He had previously directed and co-written the earlier films, but he ultimately had no involvement with Terminator 3. Carolco Pictures, which owned half of the rights to future Terminator sequels, went into bankruptcy in November 1995. Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar obtained the full rights in 1998, and they produced the film. In 1999, Tedi Sarafian was hired to write the first draft of the script. Mostow joined the project as director in 2001, and he brought on John Brancato and Michael Ferris to rewrite Sarafian's script. With a final budget of $187.3 million, it was the most expensive film ever made up to that point. The budget included a $5 million salary for Mostow and a record $30 million salary for Schwarzenegger. Filming took place in California from April to September 2002. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Stan Winston created the special effects, as they did for the previous film.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines premiered in Westwood, Los Angeles on June 30, 2003, and was released on July 2, 2003 by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States and by Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International under the Columbia Pictures label in worldwide territories. It grossed over $433.4 million worldwide and was followed by a sequel, Terminator Salvation, in 2009.