The company that owns the rights to the Terminator franchise is currently filing for bankruptcy after it's parent company, Halcyon, sued a former employee and a hedge fund company over alleged financial wrongdoing in connection with Terminator Salvation (Filmstalker review).

Right now it seems a little bit of a mess, and unclear where the rights to Terminator would go if the company folded. You might think it would be the parent company, Halcyon, or you would hope at least. They could be sold off as assets to the highest bidder.

Right now there's not a lot of information and the story from Variety tells us little more than the bare facts of the matter. The company T Asset Acquisition has:

...commenced reorganization proceedings in federal bankruptcy court in Los Angeles and will seek to restructure its financial obligations and emerge from Chapter 11 later this year or early next year.

I'm not entirely up on what that means, but I would guess it's not out of the question for them to do a deal with Halcyon, sell the rights to them, and get busy with folding.

The lawsuit that was raised by Halcyon was against the Pacificor hedge fund company who were allegedly doing some shady business dealing to take advantage of confidential business information they had access to for Halcyon and “filing a lien” on Dominion Group, owned by the heads of Halcyon, and trying to block it from obtaining financing for Halcyon.

Perhaps they were fans of the original two films, or maybe even they're Terminators themselves.

Who really knows. The courts will out the answers in an elongated and lawyer enriching trial, and eventually we'll find out what will happen to the Terminator franchise.

It's kind of ironic that this happens now and not just after undoubtedly the worst Terminator in the series, the third. Still, it does have a rather immediate effect. McG, or anyone, won't be making a sequel until the rights are sorted out.