Christian Bale "Thiiiiiiiis Close" to Playing Terminator's John Connor

Well, after being dismissed by many industry and media aficionados as bunk, it turns out that recent reports from Ain't It Cool news are correct; Christian Bale may star in the next Terminator film.

The reports were confirmed today by MSN.com, citing an anonymous source close to the film's production.

The source told MSN that Bale is one of the top candidates for the role of John Connor in a new revival of the Terminator movie franchise. The film, currently in preproduction is tentatively titled "Terminator: Salvation."

The story revolves around an adult John Connors (Originally played by Eddie Furlong in T2), living in a not too distant future. Despite the heroic efforts of the main characters of the previous movies, all the predictions and horrific visions are coming to pass. Connors finds himself leading the charge of the resistance in a world being overrun by the evil sentient artificial intelligence known as Skynet.

The new film is expected to be the first of a new series of Terminator trilogies set mostly in the future. If Bale lands the role it is expected that he would reprise the role throughout the entire trilogy.

Many news sources originally dismissed the report because it seemed unlikely that Bale would consider taking on the extra workload and responsibility, when considering his already busy acting career and his commitment to the newly revitalized Batman franchise.

For those of you not in the know Bale played a new, younger Batman in 2005's Batman Begins.

It's said that Bale had been holding off on taking on any new major projects because of the amount of time taken up with his responsibilities on the Batman films. The sequel of that movie "The Dark Knight" reportedly took over six-months to shoot.

The original film series starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a tough, time traveling cyborg. Arnie has publicly stated he will not consider any more film roles while he is busy as governor of California. It is believed that the new trilogy will feature predominantly CGI robots as the enemies. The internet is abuzz with rumors of stars such as Vin Diesel, The Rock, and Orlando Bloom considering the role of the Terminator's human identity, but none have been confirmed.

There is also a television series in production based on the Sarah Connor character from the original trilogy.

Batman: The Dark Knight arrives in theatres July 18^th 2008.

Terminator: Salvation is slated for a summer 2009 release and will be directed by McG of Charlie's Angels fame.