BEVERLY HILLS, California — Barely five weeks remain until director McG is scheduled to unleash Armageddon in the summer blockbuster "Terminator Salvation." And as he puts his finishing touches on what promises to be one of the biggest, loudest films of 2009, one concern is beginning to intensify: the absence of the franchise's signature star, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"Who said that? Was it Terry Crews?" the "Charlie's Angels" filmmaker asked us recently, when we caught up with him at his production office to discover that Crews' recent confirmation of the Governator's appearance in the sequel may have been a bit premature. "Yeah, I heard about that."

Following on the heels of the burly star's confirmation to us (twice!) that Schwarzenegger was in the flick, McG insisted that the actor was mistaken. While McG has made no secret of the fact that he wants Arnold for the fourth "Terminator" film, resulting in a public back-and-forth, the director said that if the original T-800 doesn't change his position soon, the cameo might not happen.

"Not yet," is how McG phrased the status of Arnold's cameo, even going so far as to address our cameras directly. "In fact, today is April 10th, I'm doing this interview on April 10th and we don't know if Schwarzenegger is in the movie or not; it's not clear. I can say that."

To further complicate matters, McG has stated on numerous occasions that some representation of Schwarzenegger's killing machine will be seen on camera — even if Arnold himself isn't in the movie.

"This film is largely about Skynet collecting human tissue in the interest of creating lifelike tissue for the T-800, which is the Schwarzenegger character," McG explained. "And if you think about it, we had to go through a lot of lab rats to get to the polio vaccine. Skynet has to go through a lot of human beings to get to that realistic T-800. Kyle Reese always talks about the T-600 being easy to recognize — a rubber skin, prosthetic look. We've got two T-600s in the film, but it's [about] the coming of the T-800, which represents lifelike human flesh being grown in order to get to that level of proficiency."

As for whether the larger-than-life Schwarzenegger will officially put himself into "Terminator Salvation," McG said his offer still stands — and if Arnold wants in, he'll do his best to make it happen. "It's a complicated, delicate balancing act as of now," McG said of his ongoing talks with Arnold. "The jury is still out."

Check out everything we've got on "Terminator Salvation."

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