It’s time for the top-secret Stargate program to finally go public.
That’s according to the man who co-created the franchise’s long-running television
universe, and who wants to make a new series.
Brad Wright has written a pilot script for a fourth live-action Stargate show ... but
it’s up to Amazon to decide whether the show ever gets made.
If it does go ahead, the writer and co-creator of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate
Universe believes that the time has come to reveal the Stargate to the world — and,
in so doing, open up a whole new world for storytelling.
In this video we’re going to run down Brad Wright’s most recent comments on his plans
for a fourth series.
We’ll also look at why all eyes are on Amazon to see if this show will come to pass.
And stay tuned to the end of the video to find out which members of the SG-1 cast are
in the new script.
Amazon is buying MGM, and as we draw near the end of 2021 it seems inevitable that the
Stargate franchise will return in some way, shape, or form.
But will new Stargate scrap the existing canon and reboot the sci-fi universe that is beloved
around the world?
Or will the next Stargate series continue the established continuity that was built
over 17 seasons and more than 350 episodes?
Writer and executive producer Brad Wright himself is ready to return to the world he
helped to create, should Amazon executives give him the green light.
And he is ready to push the story of the Stargate program into completely new territory.
In Wright’s current pitch for a fourth live-action series, the Stargate will be public knowledge.
“I think the trick to anything would be that it’s high time the world found out
about the Stargate program, for better or for worse, “Keeping all of that technology
from the world at a time when we could really use it, at a time when climate change is a
genuine threat, at a time when there was a pandemic that we sure could have used a fix
for, for example.
The world needs to find out.”
“The secret needs to get out, especially since we have come so far and will have come
so far after another 11 or 12 years.”
If Amazon green-lights a new show now to air in 2022 or 2023, that’s how much time will
have passed since Stargate Universe went off the air.
When the franchise went dark back in 2011, Earth had built a fleet of space ships, and
acquired numerous alien weapons and technologies, hyperdrive engines, matter-energy transporters,
databases holding centuries of knowledge from both the Lanteans and the Asgard ... all still
a secret from the public.
That despite multiple nations being read in on the U.S. Air Force’s top-secret Stargate
program, and numerous private contractors receiving access to classified material from
the S.G.C.’s offworld operations.
Wright’s pitch for a new show currently has a pilot script completed.
But Amazon is still keeping its cards close to the vest.
A decision appears to be waiting for Amazon’s acquisition of MGM to be completed — or
at least further down the road.
Revealing the Stargate to the public would be a game-changing event, which the producers
always held back during the franchise’s 14-year television run.
During the shows’ production Wright told GateWorld that disclosure was such a big idea
for this universe that it deserved to be the subject of a new Stargate film.
Ultimately, he intended to finally cross that threshold in his planned direct-to-DVD movie,
Stargate: Revolution.
This would have followed 2008’s Stargate: Continuum as SG-1’s third movie — a Jack
O’Neill-centric story that would up-end everything by taking the Stargate public.
But after three years in limbo, in 2011 that project was scrapped after the bottom fell
out of the DVD market — and after MGM had gone through bankruptcy, and was now under
new management.
So a fourth TV series in which all of humanity is now aware of the Stargate, interstellar
travel, advanced technologies ... even alien species?
This would be a “next generation” for storytelling in the Stargate universe.
The Stargate franchise has been off the air for more than a decade, excepting only the
low-budget Web series Stargate Origins in 2018.
Wright was not involved in that production, which took most of its cues from the 1994
Stargate feature film rather than from the television canon.
News first broke in January of 2019 that Wright was in active conversation with MGM about
creating some kind of new Stargate project.
When they were ready to go out and pitch it to potential broadcast and streaming homes
in 2020, the endeavor was iced by the COVID-19 pandemic (which caused all film and television
production to grind to a halt).
Wright told BleedingCool.com: “I wrote a pilot for [MGM] and the timing could not have
been worse in terms of delivery, because the pandemic hit pretty much as I was typing the
end.”
Stargate’s fourth series went back onto the shelf, as studios around the world struggled
to figure out how to restart film and television production.
Then, in May of 2021, Amazon announced that it is buying up Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and all
of its assets — including the Stargate franchise.
That news creates all sorts of new possibilities for Stargate, once the deal is completed.
But will Amazon want to produce Wright’s script ... or go back to the drawing board?
Brad Wright’s plans for a fourth live-action Stargate series might yet come to fruition,
though the news of Amazon’s $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM seems to have put the whole
thing on the back-burner at the studio.
For his part Wright hopes that, whatever they ultimately choose to do with the franchise,
Stargate’s new owners will honor what has come before as they look to inject new life
into the brand.
He told Syfy Wire: “My goal was to create something that was new that also honored the
existing universe, that lived in the canon of SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe, and therefore
included some of those characters.
Bring in a new guard?
Absolutely.
But not at the expense of the pre-existing characters, who I think would still be very
much on their game and still firing on all cylinders.”
Wright’s plans for the fourth series include the return of several fan-favorite characters
from Stargate’s previous shows.
Dr. Daniel Jackson and Colonel Cameron Mitchell are in the pilot script, and Wright has talked
with both actors Michael Shanks and Ben Browder about coming back to reprise their roles.
Also in the script is Amanda Tapping’s character — now promoted to General Samantha Carter.
“Of course there would be a General Carter,” Wright said.
“Why wouldn’t there be?
Who else would run the whole shebang other than her?”
He also suggested that former Stargate SG-1 leading man Richard Dean Anderson’s General
Jack O’Neill would have a part to play, too.
Anderson made a surprise cameo appearance at The Companion’s Stargate A.I. table reading
this month, which Wright helped to spearhead.
These legacy characters would probably make only the occasional guest appearance, with
the show following a brand new team.
Wright hinted earlier this year that his script may include something akin to a “Stargate
Academy,” where beloved characters from past shows could be serving — though the
show itself would not by any means be limited to that setting.
Wright appears hopeful that, whether or not it’s his pitch, Amazon will bring Stargate
back in some form.
He said: “I can’t imagine Amazon not doing something with the franchise, or empowering
MGM to do something with the franchise for [them].
... There’s so much mythology that we covered but there’s so many stories yet to be told
and so many new places yet to be visited.
And I think it would be fun to do that.”
Given Amazon’s intention to make use of MGM’s intellectual property, it seems like
it’s only a matter of time before Stargate is back on the small screen in some form.
But will it be Brad Wright’s fourth series, or something completely different?
Drop us a comment below and tell us what you think of a new show where the Stargate has
been made public to the world.
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