You’ve probably heard the news by now that hedge fund Pacificor, LLC has purchased the rights to the Terminator franchise from Halcyon’s bankruptcy auction. This transaction has sparked massive speculation on the franchise’s future. Will McG make more sequels? Will T1 and T2 screenwriter Will Wisher’s treatments turn into the next two sequels? Will Pacificor go for a total reboot?
The future not set: there is no fate but what this shady hedge fund makes, right? Well, I wasn’t content with that. As a rabid Terminator fanboy, I needed to know how this turns out, so I took the liberty of using the Overthinking It Time Displacement Field (OTITDF) to travel ten years into the future to see what will become of our beloved franchise.
My report is as follows. Be warned; it ain’t pretty.
2012-2014: The Sequels
Pacificor’s first move was to get a sequel to Terminator: Salvation out the door as quickly as possible. McG, not having anything else better to do, agreed to helm the sequel. Christian Bale, upon hearing that McG had brought on the same Director of Photography from the last movie, refused to participate.
McG, in a bind, recalled Freddie Prinze, Jr’s fine work in Wing Commander and tapped him for the role of John Connor. Nicolas Cage just showed up on set, and nobody had the heart to tell him he wasn’t actually in the movie.
Pacificor, for its part, contributed the title:
Matthew Wrather hosts with Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee to overthink their love of America, and then to field listener e- and voice-mail, almost none of which comes from America. Ontario, Australia, London, Poland, Germany, Iraq (!)… and one from Nebraska.
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Download Episode 53 (MP3)
Here’s the poster for He’s Just Not That Into You. Notice anything interesting about the names?
All of those nine last names are in the first half of the alphabet. What are the odds?
Actually, nevermind, I’ll just tell you.
Last names actually aren’t evenly distributed throughout the alphabet. There are definitely more clustered towards the front half, but it’s tough to find hard numbers. A guy here claims that in the Cleveland phone book, 62.5% of the names are A-L. I’m not saying that Hollywood names follow the same pattern as Cleveland names, but it’ll have to do.
If the probability of one actor’s name being in the first half of the alphabet is 62.5%, the probability of nine actors’ names all being in the first half is .625^9. Which is .01455. So basically, the odds of this poster are 69 to 1. (Giggity giggity.)
A theory: maybe the casting director started at the top of his filing cabinet, and only got to L before all the parts were gone.