How much 'Terminator' does the world really need?

The future, as the "Terminator" movies keep telling us, is not yet written. But the screenplay of the seventh installment in the sci-fi franchise apparently is.

Wait a minute, you say. Aren't we only up to five? Technically, yes. "Terminator Genisys," which officially opened Wednesday — in the real-world timeline, that means Tuesday evening — is the fifth and latest chapter in the long-running series about time-traveling killer robots. But according to "Genysis" producer David Ellison of Skydance Productions, it may not be the last.

"Right now, the audience is 100 percent going to decide if there is another movie," Ellison recently told Slash Film, "but we're wanting to hopefully plan for the success and plan for the future. My favorite trilogies of all time — I think me and Dana (Goldberg, Skydance's Chief Creative Officer) share that — are the 'Star Wars' trilogy and 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy. And those two have one thing in common, which was they were all written prior to shooting a frame of the first movie. They knew they were going to, so you weren't having to figure it out as you go along. Obviously there are very successful examples of that, 'The Dark Knight' being one that is unbelievable, but we wanted to know where we were heading. We spent a lot of time breaking that down, and we do know what the last line of the third movie is, should we be lucky enough to get to make it."

"Star Wars"? "The Lord of the Rings"? "The Dark Knight"? That's some highfalutin company you're aspiring to keep there, Ellison. Especially when the last two "Terminator" films were met with at the box office, not to mention from critics. While a moderately fun reboot, "Genisys" leaves many loose ends in its time travel narrative, even seeming to revel in its lack of closure.

"Though questions remain, we'll search for the answers together," says Jai Courtney's Kyle Reese, as he and Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) ride off into the sunset in a pick-up truck.

Whether the audience will ride shotgun with them remains to be seen, but Ellison and Skydance clearly hope so. Even if you don't stick around for the sixth and seventh films — should there even be any — do stick around for the closing credits of "Genisys." There's a sequel teaser straight out of Marvel, whose success this production company aspires to emulate.