We all know how strongly Christian Bale expresses his opinions. So if he decided it was worth making a fourth Terminator without Arnold Schwarzenegger, fans can rest assured he did not come to that decision lightly.

“Initially, when I heard of this I thought it was done, that there was no new story there to be told,” Bale said. “Then some people told me, ‘Yeah, you don’t want to touch that.’ Then I thought, ‘Okay, I do want to touch that because why are they saying that?’ Then we just kind of struck a deal which, with the writer’s strike and everything was a leap of faith, because we knew that we’d struck a deal that the script would be written, but nothing could be done however long it was. I just couldn’t believe that it couldn’t become something that was worthy of people putting down ten bucks in a movie theater. So I did take a leap of faith with that. I did eventually say, ‘Okay, come on. Lets go for it’ without there being a script but just a few ideas around, some ideas of who they could hire as a writer.”

It seems to have worked out for Terminator Salvation, but maybe Bale should quit while he’s ahead. “Again, I just sort of had this notion that, and maybe I should cut it out, when there are issues and problems and things that have to be overcome and I’ve got people looking at me going, ‘Why are you even going to take that risk? Why would you bother with that?’ Then a lot of other people saying to me, ‘Why would you be in that kind of movie? We don’t see that.’ I go, ‘Well, I really want to do it more the more that people say that.’ I like doing different styles of movies.”

He certainly doesn’t need another major franchise. That superhero one is doing just fine. “Any planning that I have in my career is totally accidental really. I tend not to fathom these notions until people like yourself bring them up for me. I certainly didn’t have any doubts or concerns about that. It just became something that over time grew to interest me because I certainly wasn’t interested to begin with. Then it began to interest me. In some ways that was another thing that some people were saying to me. ‘Why do you want to do that?’ That made me go, ‘I’m going to go do it now.’”