Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson at the site of the new Terminator ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, CA, March 2009. Victor wears sweater Lanvin T-shirt Uniqlo Jeans and shoes Dior Homme Sunglasses Chanel. Derek wears shirt, vest, pants Tom Ford Shoes Vans Sunglasses Gucci

How do two guys from the East Coast with no experience operating in the Hollywood maelstrom wind up producing the latest installment of Terminator, one of Tinseltown’s hugest franchises? “To do the things we wanted to do, we realized we needed to make a splash and get everybody’s attention,” explains Derek Anderson, 40, the co-C.E.O. of the rising production team the Halcyon Company. He and partner Victor Kubicek, 27, had been toying with a script in the spring of 2007 when they heard through the grapevine that the owners of the franchise were going through a split and wanted to sell. So they acted fast, incorporated Halcyon as a company, and submitted an anonymous offer. “We told them it was on the table for twenty-four hours only,” Anderson recalls. “They came back in six. It was a major, major coup.”

Such a coup that studio insiders immediately loosed packs of lawyers on Halcyon, attempting to wrest the treasured property from the fledgling company. But the deal was airtight, clearing a path for the duo to produce future Terminator films and giving them control of the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and all merchandising and licensing rights. Once Halcyon had withstood the legal challenges (though they’re now embroiled in another lawsuit), the real work began. Anderson and Kubicek had to build a blockbuster machine from the ground up—think action figures, video games, amusement park rides, apparel. The actual moviemaking was almost easier than the business dealings. “We have a fiduciary responsibility to the picture, but in the end we’re creative guys, not suits,” says Kubicek. That explains their surprise selection of McG, best known for the Charlie’s Angels films and the sports drama We Are Marshall, to direct Terminator Salvation, the fourth installment of the series. “We had every director you can think of at the table wanting to be a part of this,” Kubicek adds. “McG was an obscure choice—he looked to us for this opportunity and we looked to him.”

After making their first big splash with the Terminator franchise, Halcyon made another later in 2007 by negotiating an exclusive first-look deal with Electric Shepherd Productions, which controls rights to the catalog of legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick, whose works have been adapted into films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly. “Science fiction is a great palette,” says Anderson. “Philip K. Dick wrote the kind of stories that really resonate with people. Even more so now—the way he deals with political, social, and economic themes is so prescient and timely.”

But Anderson and Kubicek’s interests extend beyond science fiction, and Halcyon is developing projects in every genre. “We are after anything that inspires us and could make great material,” says Kubicek. “We have a first-look-type deal with Bob Colacello—he’s a journalist, an unusual person to have a first-look agreement with. We’re going to be adapting a story he wrote about Bill and Pat Buckley for Vanity Fair.”

“We haven’t announced that yet,” Anderson interrupts.

“Nope,” Kubicek replies. “You heard it here first.”

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