I won’t criticize the content, though I think you are reaching a bit when you call T:Salvation a failure this early in the game. When the overseas B/O and DVD sales are tallied, I have a feeling the studio will come out ahead of their $200M (production/distribution costs) investment in the long run.
I want to mention that I don’t believe Cameron or Gale-Ann Hurd were in any way directly involved with T:3:ROTM. They were given only character credit, as was their due. In fact, the same “creative” (notice the quotations) team that wrote T:3 also wrote T:Salvation.
Cameron had lost the rights to the Terminator series in divorce proceedings with Linda Hamilton, who turned around and sold it off, where it eventually landed in the lap of one producing team, and then another.
