The venerable Deadline reports that a new Stargate series and a new movie/s are currently being discussed at Amazon, with the movie “likely going first.”
It’s not a huge surprise to learn that Stargate (along with Robocop) is a priority for Amazon now that the $8.5 billion MGM purchase has bedded in – they were on the list mooted by industry insider Jeff Snider back in March – but this is the first time one of the major news sites has weighed in.
What is new is the suggestion that it could open with a new movie, which totally makes sense. After all, Amazon recently found its cinema legs with the $100 million release of Creed III, and a new blockbuster Stargate movie would be a fantastic way to kick off a new series in style. That’d hopefully give a new Stargate series a much better chance of survival than so many series hyped by the streamers and then painfully dropped by the wayside.
The only downer in the poly bag of uppers is that so far the Stargate SG-1 showrunners aren’t involved. Deadline notes that along with a few A-listers who have reached out about adapting MGM properties, Amazon is “leaning on its own roster of talent for some projects.” None of this automatically means that Amazon won’t eventually involve Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe co-creator Brad Wright, any other fan-favorite Stargate writers and producers like Robert C. Cooper or Joseph Mallozzi, or that it won’t take place in the same continuity as the show we love.
Plenty of fans have pointed to the success of Star Trek: Picard in showing that you can blend multiple eras of a long-running science fiction show, and we’d add Star Wars, and Doctor Who to that list. Heck, even Marvel has re-rebooted Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back into Spider-Man.
So one silver lining is that the hard reboot seems to be a thing of the past and for what it’s worth, Amazon does have some great talent on the books. How about Paper Girls showrunner Stephany Folsom, or The Peripheral’s Scott B. Smith? Both adapted pre-existing work – a comic book in the case of Paper Girls and a William Gibson novel in the case of The Peripheral – with real verve and affection.
Check back for more news as we get it. Until then, let’s make some noise about the sort of show we want to see, the cast we want back, and the creators we want at the tiller.
The cost of your membership has allowed us to mentor new writers and allowed us to reflect the diversity of voices within fandom. None of this is possible without you. Thank you. 🙂
