‘Terminator Zero’ Red Band Trailer: A Gory Anime Franchise Makeover Gets a New Spin in Japan

Netflix dropped the red band trailer for “Terminator Zero,” the anime series from Skydance and animation studio Production I.G. (premiering August 29), which touts its brutal action and gory violence. The 2D franchise makeover was created and executive produced by Mattson Tomlin (“The Batman — Part II” co-writer) and directed by Masashi Kudo.

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In an alternative to James Cameron’s Sarah Connor storyline, a Terminator (Timothy Olyphant) is sent from 2022 to Japan in 1997 to kill scientist Malcolm Lee (André Holland), who’s developing a powerful AI system, Kokoro (Rosario Dawson), to thwart Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. But the creepy, unrelenting cyborg assassin faces an extraordinary foe in Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno), a resistance soldier sent from 2022 to protect Lee and his three kids.

“When I was approached by Skydance and Production I.G. to do this TV show as an anime, they wanted some Japanese component,” Tomlin told IndieWire, “and I thought it was a great opportunity to set it in Japan. It felt like a very organic way to both lean into the strengths of what this team was, but then also to get away from where the franchise had already been and go into a new place.

“And then it just came down to finding a story, so I re-watched all of the James Cameron movies, and it became apparent to me that he tells these very clear primal stories about families. And so it was clear we’re going to do time travel, we’re going to do killer robots, we’re going to do the nuclear apocalypse, but, at the end of the day, this has to be a story about a family and what they go through in this war with the machines.”

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Going with anime from Production I.G. offers a fresh aesthetic that’s gruesomely gorgeous. Every moment of the trailer is like a dance of bloody destruction. Olyphant’s Terminator mows people down with his automatic weapons and crushes or tears them apart with ease. However, Lee’s flesh-burning vision of the nuclear apocalypse leaves its own indelible mark.

“And it’s not just animated, but it’s anime, so I’m grappling with two different pockets of fandom,” added Tomlin. “There are the people who are ‘Terminator’ fans used to big blockbuster action movies that are live action. And then you’ve got anime fans who are into the pantheon of all the different things that anime can be. And so this needs to declare itself as being violent and gutsy and action-driven.”

Watch the trailer below.