Terminator Zero is an anime series from Production IG, the animation studio behind the classic anime film, Ghost in the Shell. The 8-episode series is now available on Netflix and follows a family that a Terminator hunts from the future.

The series debuted on Netflix on August 29th, the month and day of Skynet’s attack, aka Judgement Day. The first two films have been cherished by fans, and Showrunner Mattson Tomlin reveals that the series will pay homage to the first two films and explain the different timelines.

“It felt the most clear,” Mattson Tomlin tells Nerd Reactor during a roundtable interview. “It’s kind of the thing as a baseline fans know. ‘August 29th, 1997. Okay. Got it.’ People generally love the first two movies. You get into, I think, Genysis, it starts to move Judgement Day. I know Terminator 3, it gets postponed a few times. There’s something about that for me where I go, ‘Fine. Valid.’ And when you get to, I want to say episode 7 of Terminator Zero, for the people who really need to understand ‘Where in the timeline are we’ and what’s canon and what’s not, there’s a moment that is going to give those people what they want as far as an answer.

“For me, it really just kind of came down to what’s the most primal, elemental thing. I think the first two movies really set up the concept of Judgement Day so clearly, and then we kind of skip it. For me going into working on this show, it just felt like you’ve seen Judgement Day in flashback, in flash-forward, in dreams, in visions. We’ve never lived through it. We’ve never been on the ground. We’ve never been in ground zero of it. That for me felt like new territory to go into. It’s hard to find new territory for something that’s 40 years old.”

Directing the series is Masashi Kudo (Bleach: Memories of Nobody, Sanrio Boys), who has a history of working on a lot of fun Japanese franchises including Bleach and Sanrio. With Terminator Zero, it’s a darker anime with a lot of violence and blood.

“Yes, especially this time with Terminator, we wanted to bring back the horror of the first Terminator film,” Kudo said. “So for me, I love horror films to begin with, but it’s very hard to sort of do horror in anime. You know, you could paint so much, but it doesn’t go through. So for me to be able to tell a story that has a strong horror element, it was very, very exciting, especially because I wasn’t able to do it until now. So I put my all into this project.”

About Terminator Zero

2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.

Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children.

Mattson Tomlin (Project Power, The Batman II) is the showrunner, executive producer and writer. The series is directed by Masashi Kudo and animated by Production IG (Ghost in the Shell). Also serving as executive producers are Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg & Don Granger)

The voice cast is Timothy Olyphant as Terminator, André Holland as Malcolm Lee, Rosario Dawson as Eiko, Ann Dowd as The Prophet and Sonoya Mizuno as Kokoro.

Terminator Zero is now on Netflix and all 8 episodes were released on August 29, 2024.