A lot of classic films, and especially films with an established mythology, have, what one would call, a Bible. The spoken Bible for the film would be an audio commentary by either the director or the writer. Nothing can top that. But if there is an equivalent of a written bible, then that would have been a press kit back in the days.
Press Kits are a package that was carefully prepared by the movie studio and their marketing team, and contained movie synopsis, credits, bios for the director and the actors, and, most importantly, writeup on the film and every aspect of its production. It was then sent out to all kinds of different magazines and publishers, augmented by black and white photos. Some publications used strictly the photos provided by the press kit, some licensed colorful ones. Some simply took the most interesting quotes from the Press Kit as their article, some didn't use any info in it at all.
There's 8 different written sections inside, each focusing on different aspect of the production or a bio, and some kits came with eight 8x10 photos, and some with more.
Couple interesting things on the pages: in Jim Cameron’s bio, he says he originally wanted to be a comic book artist, which is a fairly well known fact today, but he does mention his three favorite comic book characters and they’re Spider-Man, Ironman and Silver Surfer, which might have been an inspiration for the future character.
It is also a well known story/myth that the image of the Terminator came to Jim Cameron in a nightmare while he was in Rome. Well, in the beginning the official given story was different, and in the Kit, Gale Hurd says that Jim came up with the story while working with her on the movie Battle Beyond Stars in the 70’s and they vowed to work on it someday.
As one would expect, an original Press Kit for the first film is extremely hard to find and usually goes for even more than $400, some even pricing it at over a $1,000! It's a really cool item and a must have for a Terminator "librarian", and I was lucky to get it when I did. Here are just a few sample pages:
