A brand new Stargate series could be set in the future rather than the present day, Stargate SG-1 co-creator Brad Wright thinks — but there is one big catch if the new creative team at Amazon and MGM decide to go down that path for continuing the franchise.

Wright co-created Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe, and appeared in a livestream Q&A session with GateWorld and other fan outlets last weekend, hosted by The Companion.

So could something like a futuristic Stargate: The Next Generation series work for continuing this franchise?

“The answer is absolutely yes,” Wright told GateWorld. But if that’s where the next shepherds of the franchise choose to take it, he said that the thing they will need to pull it off is money. “If you do something set 80 years from now, what do the cars look like? What does Earth look like? What are the social norms? What are the politics? It’s a whole other world-building, in addition to the sci-fi component.”

“Honestly, Star Trek is doing a pretty good job of it – of [depicting a] modern Earth,” he said. “They really are. But they have a lot of money. They have a lot of money. So if you do that then my suggestion is: have a lot of money.”

Throughout its life the common denominator for Stargate has been its relatable characters.

Throughout his tenure at the helm of the franchise Wright emphasized that its present-day setting is one of the core elements that made Stargate what it was. Viewers find the characters (and their references) more immediately relatable than, say, members of Starfleet in Gene Roddenberry’s utopian future.

But that does not mean that those characters can’t live a few years down the road for Stargate to still be Stargate.

Stargate did have a show set in the future more than 20 years ago: the short-lived animated series Stargate Infinity, which saw a team of trainees flee a future Stargate Command after their leader is wrongfully accused of selling out Earth to an alien enemy. (That show had no involvement from the live-action producers, and is not canon to the Stargate universe.)

Wright noted that even just picking up the story in the present day works as a sort of soft reboot — simply because so much time has passed since viewers last saw these characters on screen. SG-1’s last story was told in 2008; Atlantis went off the air in 2009; and SGU ended in 2011.

“I get the rationale for a reset,” he said. “But a ‘next generation’ is sort of a happy medium. Because it is sort of reset. It is enough in the future that the world is different.”

The universe would have naturally evolved so much since SGU went off the air that new writers could continue the canon and effectively treat it as a “soft reboot.”

So far Wright has not been contacted by Amazon MGM Studios for any involvement in what they may be planning. Many long-time fans of Stargate (including yours truly), meanwhile, have made it clear that they want the next Stargate project to continue the franchise’s existing continuity rather than rebooting the canon from scratch.

“They’re not consulting me,” he said. “Nobody is phoning me and saying, ‘Hey, Brad, what do you think?’ [And] I get that. … Maybe they will call me, but they haven’t yet. And that’s fine — it’s their property, and they own it, and it’s not like I haven’t done my share of Stargate. So I’m fine with it. I’m very happy that it will continue.”

Don’t miss Brad Wright’s full remarks in GateWorld’s interview. And check out the complete, 2-hour livestream with fans over on our YouTube channel!