Arnold Schwarzenegger will be in the next Terminator film – his fifth and the series’ sixth.

The franchise has fallen on hard times lately with the last three installments a pale imitation of what came before them. Despite that, creator James Cameron – who continues working on the next four Avatar movies – is hoping to produce a sixth installment which will see Deadpool director Tim Miller take the helm of the project.

Cameron has revealed that Arnold Schwarzenegger is part of his plans for what comes next and his intention is for this next movie to explore why the T-800 looks the way he does.

PHOTO SOURCE: Terminator Genisys, Paramount Pictures

Speaking with The Arnold Fans (via JoBlo) Cameron had this to say:

“Yeah, you got to ask yourself, ‘Why did they make these characters look and sound like Arnold? There has to be a reason. So yeah, it has flashed through my mind that there has to have been a prototype. There has to have been a guy who’s DNA was harvested from – that they grew the organic outer layer that they grew the Terminator from…and that presumably was a real person at some point. Now, the question is, did that person have some sort of meaning to Skynet on WHY they chose that one? Or was it like a whole rack of Terminators and the one that happened to be the Arnold model just happened to be closest to the door going out to the time displacement center and all the others looked different? I’ve asked myself these questions but it’s never been resolved…so stay tuned! We’re talking pretty seriously now about doing some new Terminator films or possibly a trilogy and you’ll just have to see what surfaces in those.”

The idea of Schwarzenegger serving as the human basis for the T-800’s appearance was actually first toyed with in a scene originally intended to be part of Terminator 3, albeit in a joking way. The scene cast Arnold as Sgt. William Candy, the man selected to be the physical basis for the T-800. The character’s voice and southern accent was clearly not Arnold’s though, and a different off-screen character — voiced by Arnold — is heard saying that the voice can be fixed. The scene was ultimately cut from the film, but was an extra on the DVD release.

Cameron had no involvement in Terminator 3 so it’s unlikely he’ll use that thread. Instead, he’ll most likely use original content though the exact details remain to be seen.

Terminator 6 begins filming in 2018.