[Movies] Joss Whedon Explains His Wacky Terminator Letter

Posted by Larry Csonka on 11.05.2009

Joss being Joss…

You may remember the other day when Joss Whedon wrote a very wacky letter to the owners of the Terminator franchise. Well, EW.com caught up with Whedon, who offered an explanation of the letter…

It Wasn't A Terminator Slam: "Here's the thing: It's not a slam on The Terminator. I love The Terminator. That part's totally true. I was thinking to myself, 'Not since they auctioned off frames from The Little Mermaid have I wished I had more money this much.' So you know what, never hurts to ask. I loved the movies, even the later movies. I loved the mythology. I loved the TV show [The Sarah Connor Chronicles] - like, really loved. Not for pretend. And not just because of [star] Summer [Glau].

On It Being A Joke: "But mostly, it's just me being a dumb-ass, because that seems to be what I do best - I'm not even very good at that. So, no, I do not think they're going to call me and say 'Congratulations! We'll have that $10,000 now.' Although, it would be non-exclusive. Other people could make Terminator movies and TV shows too. I'm just putting that out there in case you publish this. I adore the franchise. I literally did learn a huge amount from that [franchise]. [The Terminator] came out when I was in college, and I was like, This is how you construct a story. It's very important to me. That part was true. The part where I think I'm going to get it, not so true. And certain ideas, like [bidding for] The Lord of the Rings and the Batman franchise, also possibly not true. If they will give them to me for $10,000, I absolutely would write a check. That's true. They just didn't say those [properties] were for sale. They said they were on back-order, is what I understand. It's all ridiculous, but it comes from love."