You’ve got to give Justin Lin (Fast Five) some credit — he’s damn faithful to the ones who made him. First he dropped out of the Highlander reboot and now he's backed out of the next "Terminator" installment to work on the sixth "Fast and Furious" film.
According to Deadline, Lin’s departure is not a result of bad blood, but the project has been ushered along faster than anticipated thanks to Megan Ellison, the new owner of the series rights, and original star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ellison has a mind to get the first of two new films into production as soon as the fourth quarter of 2012, which would interfere with Lin’s schedule on "Fast Six." Lin is quick to point out that should Ellison and Schwarzenegger be willing to wait until he is finished, he would be willing to return.
It’s no surprise that Ellison and company would want to get the ball rolling on this new investment, even without a script or a studio attached to distribute. Having bought the rights from Pacifcor (a California hedge-fund that obtained the rights in bankruptcy court), one of the details is that certain rights revert back to the original creator 25 years later — or whoever said creator assigned the rights to. In this case, that individual is James Cameron, who signed the rights over to another individual years ago and has washed his hands of the series since. However, seeing as how that wouldn’t occur until 2018, we imagine that gives Ellison plenty of time to circle the wagons and muster up two films (supposedly) to end the war between Humanity and Skynet.