Hot Take: Amazon Should Greenlight Three New Stargate Projects

The dynamics of television and the Stargate franchise’s inevitable return continue to shift as 2022 turns into 2023.

Amazon’s plan to purchase MGM (and with it the Stargate franchise) for $8.45 billion was closed in March of this year. Since then it’s been radio silence on the Stargate front (aside from the shows’ recent return to Prime Video in the United States), leaving fans continuing to wonder about the future of our favorite franchise … now 11 years after it went off the air.

MGM could have wowed its audience with the announcement of a new television series in 2018, after Stargate Origins finished its 3-week run as a short-form Web series. Or in 2019, after news broke that original Stargate television co-creator Brad Wright was developing something new.

Now we are counting down the final weeks of the year, and there is still no news. And in the meantime the situation has changed: the streaming landscape is beginning to reconfigure (thanks in part to Discovery’s aggressive approach to its new WarnerMedia holdings, including HBO Max), Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are now entrenched in the television space, and Stargate fans are one year deeper into a morass of frustration that never seems to end.

It’s time for MGM and Amazon to go big. In this essay I’m going to make a case for why their best strategy for reviving Stargate in 2023 is to announce a green light for not one, not two, but three new Stargate productions.

We’ll do a bit of analysis of the state of the industry (and Stargate’s place in it). And I’ll make a pitch to the studios’ decision-makers to approach Stargate’s revival in a fan-centered way — how to leverage Stargate for both existing fans and a new generation of viewers. This comes not only from my 28 years of being a Stargate fan, but an understanding of our fandom and the challenges of world-building across multiple media.

But before we get to the analysis: here’s my pitch.

THREE NEW PROJECTS?

In its heyday Stargate was a billion-dollar franchise for MGM, thanks chiefly to licensing and global distribution all around the world. Reviving the franchise for a new generation starts with giving the green light to a new show.

That much is obvious, and between the day that show is announced and the day it premieres the next series will inevitably cause its share of debate among current fans. Is it too different? Is it expecting millions of established fans to come along for a reboot of the universe we’ve come to know and love? Is it being written by the people who made the previous shows, or by new creative talent? Is it going to ignore the dangling plot threads of the previous shows, or provide an opportunity for some measure of resolution after all these years?

But in 2023, one new show is not enough. We’ll get into why that is in a moment. But here are the three projects I want to see announced:

Of course, the practical reason why Amazon and MGM would want to dip their toe back into Stargate one bit at a time is to mitigate risk. Is the audience really still there? Would a new Stargate project have a sufficient return on investment? Why not start with a single show or movie to test the waters, in the vein of Star Trek: Discovery or The Mandalorian, before building out a universe with multiple shows?

In Stargate’s case, this common wisdom does not fit the moment. That’s because of the state of fandom and where the franchise left off, and how fans have continued to demonstrate just how invested we are in those stories and characters. Does Amazon want to make a totally new and different kind of Stargate show? All by itself, that’s just begging for backlash. But a new and different take on Stargate that is announced alongside a Brad Wright miniseries event, plus maybe an SGU movie or a clever and compelling animated series?

With this multi-project strategy the studio can have its cake and eat it, too. It can fashion a new generation of Stargate storytelling and at the same time give fans the resolution they have been calling for … for more than a decade. And, just like Star Trek or the MCU today, not every show needs to be for every viewer.

DON’T BURN YOUR FANS

This is a fan-centered pitch, because no matter how long the studio tarries the fans of Stargate continue to make it clear that we aren’t going anywhere. We aren’t going to disperse or move on to other things. #WeWantStargate!

The first question that Amazon and MGM have to answer for themselves is whether to reboot Stargate or continue on with the existing canon. But let’s be real here: a reboot is for dead brands, those without much of an existing fan base to speak of, where even the reruns are no longer making money. Reboots make sense when an IP is old (think of Netflix looking at the 1960s Lost in Space and doing something totally new and modern), or when fans of the original have moved on and a brand new audience must be established (I’m guessing not a lot of Blake’s 7 fans would be terribly mad if the 1978 classic was rebooted in 2023).

On the other hand, continuations are required when the fan base is still active and energized around that beloved, legacy content. This is what Disney did with Star Wars (regardless of what you think of the product they produced), Alcon Entertainment with Blade Runner, and most recently NBC with Quantum Leap. Those original films and shows are still a sort of “sacred text,” with far too many people who stand to be alienated by scrapping the existing canon and starting over.

Stargate too is a living franchise with a thriving, global fan base, and (thanks to streaming and DVDs) more are coming on board every year. If these fans were to be burned by a canon reboot, there’s likely to be a wide feeling of betrayal. In that scenario, not only could the studio no longer count on them to come along for a Stargate remake, but a core of the audience is bound to be actively opposed to it.

Clearly the place where the Stargate franchise finds itself today is one where an IP is revitalized, not pulled out at the root. Reboots are for when the intellectual property in question doesn’t have any value left to it beyond the core idea.

That’s just not where Stargate is — not by a mile.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The first project in my proposal is meant to give long-time fans the resolution they deserve. Even if this is a fixed and finite story, even if it’s the last time we ever see some of these characters on our screens, it would build a whole lot of good will for the studio moving forward with Stargate.

When Stargate Atlantis went off the air in 2009, and Stargate Universe in 2011, they left unfinished business. Atlantis was sitting outside San Francisco Bay, having left the Pegasus Galaxy in order to help stop a Wraith attack on Earth (“Enemy at the Gate”). But what about the millions of innocent people back in Pegasus? This is where Atlantis belongs — in the fight, continuing to make the galaxy a better place and defend countless worlds from this terrifying enemy.

SGU left off with Destiny low on power, headed into the vast expanse of emptiness between galaxies. The entire crew went into stasis for the 3-year journey … all except for Eli Wallace, who had to repair the final stasis pod or shut off his own life support to save the others (“Gauntlet”). And that’s not to mention the ship’s mission to uncover a secret from the beginning of the universe.

And what about Earth itself? In the planned third SG-1 movie, the Stargate would have finally been revealed to the public. Is that the world our heroes live in today? Or is it possible that the gate is still a closely guarded secret operated by the military?

Do these stories matter? Were they worth telling in the first place? If so, then each one deserves a suitable conclusion.

This is what Brad Wright and the rest of the production team was trying to secure for the franchise more than a decade ago. Staring down the barrel of network cancellation at the same time MGM was going bankrupt, the producers pitched a spectacular movie event — crossing over characters from all three Stargate series to bring some resolution to their stories. What if (for example) the likes of Samantha Carter, John Sheppard, Daniel Jackson, and Rodney McKay teamed up with Colonel David Telford to rescue the crew of Destiny from deep space?

That’s a big, bold story whose time has come. A 6-part event streaming globally on Prime Video is the absolutely ideal way to tell it.

A CINEMATIC UNIVERSE

Yes, there’s no doubt that we live in a Golden Age of the “cinematic universe” — a shared canon that encompasses blockbuster movies, TV shows, plus in-canon video games, novels, and comics. Marvel has rewritten the rules for superhero movies, proving that a shared universe with crossovers and plot-lines that unspool over many years actually doesn’t alienate casual moviegoers. Just the opposite: it can generate once-in-a-generation storytelling events like Avengers: Endgame.

People are smart, and the shared universe will make them more likely to check out the next movie or show.

Now with the dawn of the Streaming Age, Marvel and Star Wars are joining Star Trek on the small screen as well. Now the universe of the feature films is filled out even more, with new texture and character depth delivered through TV and miniseries. There’s always another series or movie right around the corner. And this drives not only fan engagement but ad buys, merchandise sales, and convention tickets.

I might be a hopeless optimist when it comes to my favorite shows, but I’m also not afraid of a dose of realism every now and again. So let’s be real: Stargate isn’t a mega-hit franchise, and might never reach the cultural awareness of Star Trek or now the MCU. But boy, an ongoing and shared universe of new stories would do wonders for the brand and its long-term success.

That’s one reason why I have pitched a minimum of three new projects for a revival of Stargate. These shows, miniseries, or even films can feed into one another in all the best ways. The shared universe allows for a great depth and breadth of world building, with crossover characters and intersecting storytelling across multiple shows and multiple media. It can create jumping-off points for in-canon novels, comics, and more. And such a fun and intricate web of stories can reintroduce viewers to Stargate’s established universe — without starting over.

This is Stargate’s breakthrough moment — an opportunity to go from “that sci-fi show with MacGyver” that your neighbor has heard of (but never watched) to real appointment television. This is the studio’s chance to go big, to roll out a multi-pronged plan to leverage a beloved franchise in an expansive and ongoing way.

As Jack O’Neill might say: Don’t screw it up.

What do you think MGM and Amazon should do with the Stargate franchise? Make your voice heard in the comments below!