The "Charlie's Angels" director has cast Sam Worthington, the star of Cameron's "Avatar," in "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins," reports Variety.

Worthington will play Marcus, a key role in a three-picture arc that begins in the days after Skynet has decimated most of the human race in a nuclear holocaust. John Connor (Christian Bale) leads the ragged group of survivors to fight off the machines trying to kill off the last of humanity.

Cameron, who directed the first two films in the "Terminator" franchise but kept his distance from the third, recommended Worthington to McG.

Worthington, a 31-year-old Australian actor, plays paraplegic war veteran Jake who, in "Avatar," travels to the planet Pandora, which is inhabited by a humanoid race at odds with the Earth humans.