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Cameron’s lean and mean Terminator fought its share of uphill battles before and after filming. “Ninety-nine people rejected The Terminator,” said Hurd. “All you need is the 100th to say yes.”
Even when Orion Pictures and Hemdale Pictures said yes, Cameron and Hurd had to stand their ground, like when Orion head Mike Medavoy insisted they cast two guys he’d met at a party: O.J. Simpson as the T-800 opposite Schwarzenegger as Kyle Reese. “I think I was on my knees retching,” Cameron recalled.
He met with Arnold anyway and cast him after a meeting when the cash-strapped filmmaker forgot his wallet (“I didn’t have any money, so why would I need an ATM card?”) and the Conan star paid for lunch.
And another after post-production and release.
Harlan Ellison successfully sued Orion Pictures and received an amount of cash and a credit in later releases of the film. He stated that the film bore an unmistakeable resemblance to his story "Soldier".
It’s well known in Hollywood that virtually every great film has been rejected dozens of times. “Twilight,” despite selling gazillions of books, was rejected again and again. I can only imagine if Gibson pitched “Passion of the Christ” to a major studio: “You mean the movie is about a guy dying? The whole thing?”