The Stargate Franchise spanned over a decade with two spin off shows and two direct to DVD movies, but in late 2011 the iris officially closed and Stargate was no more. Fans have been yearning for more Stargate ever since we left the Destiny drifting through the empty void between galaxies. Where we left off, The entire crew of the Destiny was placed in stasis chambers with the exception of Eli Wallace who was left to fix the last remaining pod. The final scene we ever saw from Stargate was that of Eli Wallace looking out on the viewing deck and smiling.
That is not to say we didn’t get any more Stargate after that, we of course were blessed to receive Stargate Origins a web exclusive series consisting of 10, 10-minute episodes which acted as a prequal to the original movie. Streaming exclusively on Stargate Command it looked as though at the time Stargate might actually be coming back, but alas, it did not.
Deadline recently confirmed that Amazon is in fact planning on bringing Stargate back with what appears to be a cinema release first and foremost followed shortly by a TV series.
We have reported on this multiple times, in fact SciTrek has been laying out this information for the past 18 months, the Deadline article was just added confirmation to the facts we already know.
But what did Deadline miss out?
Well, the journey for Stargate to finally return has been a rocky road to say the least. Before the global pandemic it was actually Brad Wright who was in talks with MGM about renewing the series, we don’t know much about what his version of Stargate would look like but we do know that the Stargate programme would have became public knowledge and of course some of the old favourites would have been involved in the show as well, both on screen and behind the camera. Unfortunately once the pandemic hit and everyone was forced to stay inside their homes, the talks between MGM and Brad Wright halted and so he waited.
Even after the lockdowns were lifted MGM didn’t continue the conversations with Brad Wright and we believe this was due to the impending buyout of MGM to Amazon. Well in March of 2022, Amazon officially purchased MGM and we all hoped they would pick up the phone and continue what Brad had started, however that did not happen and according to our sources, the reason they didn’t want to continue with Brad’s vision was simply because it wasn’t “big enough”.
Amazon later put out a pitch request for Stargate and allowed many writers to submit their ideas, one in particular was Mark Fergus from Penguin in a parka, most known for his involvement with the Hit Science Fiction show “The Expanse” which currently streams on Amazon Prime. From what we have heard from our sources, Amazon decided to go with Mark Fergus as the show runner for the new Stargate Show and started official negotiations with him and his company, but in December of 2022 those negotiations broke down.
Mark Fergus was asking for $10,000,0000 per episode, for a 10-12 episode season. Amazon countered that offer with $6,000,000 per episode, almost half of what he was expecting and he simply said he couldn’t do it. Now we expected negotiations to continue in January after the Christmas break but from what we’ve heard they never did. That’s not to say they definitely didn’t happen, we just haven’t heard it from our sources.
During the months of February and March Amazon was looking for a new head of Movies for the Amazon Pictures branch and found that person in Courtney Valenti, under Jennifer Salke. Now we were hearing rumours that Salke was pitching hard for a Stargate movie before a TV show, many voices within MGM were fighting back, but with the Deadline report confirming it and many of our sources stating the same thing, it looks like Salke got her way and we will be getting a movie first.
Now this isn’t bad news, in fact I believe this is actually a win-win for the Stargate franchise. Cinema releases hold a lot more gravitas than a streaming Television show, having Stargate come back to the big screen could be the spark that ignites the fandom and interests a whole new audience which in turn will mean more movies and television series to come.
But if Penguin in a parka is no longer negotiating, who will be in charge of Stargate?
We have heard reports that two major production companies are interested in Stargate, the first is Sony Pictures, who already have a working relationship with Penguin In A Parka. This would mean in association wth Sony mark Fergus and his partner Hawk Otsby could bring Stargate to the masses.
The second company is Warner Brothers, who have famously been involved with Bad Robot. Now we know that Bad Robot was one of the other companies to pitch when Amazon out out the call. We know what the pitch looked like and we know that Amazon rejected it. However they went in again with a second pitch and the details of that pitch are unknown.
There is a concern that if Warner Brothers gets the deal, they would use Bad Robot to produce the movie and maybe even the TV show. Based on the pitch we have previously seen, this could either be really good, or really bad for the Stargate franchise.
In any case, whoever they partner with it will be huge. It will be a multi Billion dollar deal that would see the likes of RoboCop, Legally Blonde AND Stargate come back to the big screen.
The plan has always been to kickstart a franchise. The plan has always been to have Television Shows, movies, games, comic books and more. The order in which we get them ultimately doesn’t matter, what we can take comfort in is Stargate IS coming back. We’re now just waiting for the official announcement.
