Usually, when someone meets the Governor of a state, it doesn’t set off movie rumors. But, just in case anyone forgot how crazy California, Hollywood and Politics are, we have the above photo from Latino Review that has started a little buzz around Arnold Schwarzenegger’s involvement in Terminator: Salvation. To the right is the T-800 himself and to the left is Batman, Christian Bale.

LR has a tipster that adds:

I should make it clear, i have varous contacts in WB and from what i’ve been told the fans are in for a treat. The premise of Arnie’s involvement is to have a fully rendered digital face of Arnie replacing the recently cast Roland Kickinger (The Younger version of Arnie). It seems the Director Mc G will in no doubt try all he can to ensure the Governator has some sort of involvement and as a result Arnold was on set providing key ADR (Voice over) for the visual effects guys to reference during post production. You have to remember, Arnold’s commitments are preventing his return to the movie business and this seems the best logical way to ensure his involvement.

You may recall Christopher Lee’s face being embossed on a stunt double in the Star Wars prequels?, imagine that with Arnold and you will get the picture. With ILM’s best on the scene, it looks like Mc G is trying to get a head start on James Cameron’s photo realistic stereoscopic camera systems.

As more Hollywood projects get the remake/sequel treatment, fans continue to set marks on a sliding scale between “honoring what has come before” and completely re-inventing the entire franchise. From what we’ve heard from T4, McG is hoping to finally provide the future we were promised in the previous 3 Terminator films and is looking to stay as canonical as possible, so there might be truth in this ADR/CG-Face thing.

Although a cool throwback, we have a feeling that Terminator: Salvation isn’t going to succeed or fail simply because it is the first Terminator film to not actually have Schwarzenegger in it. He was a great Terminator, but now he’s a Governor, and we’ll always have trouble forgetting that. It would be like if Ronald Regan made a sequel to Bedtime for Bonzo in the early 90s.