It’s renovation time at the Stargate my friends!
But lest this conjures up images of Daniel Jackson, Colonel O’Neill and Apophis rolling up their sleeves and giving the Ancients-spawned wormhole-creating devices a good old sand back and re-paint, let me assure you that what is really afoot is a re-boot.
Yes indeed, the Stargate franchise has finally attracted the attention of the powers that be, and is being given another re-imagined lease on life, the kind that has seen Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and countless more creative cinema dynasties march boldly back into the zeitgeist.
It’s hardly a surprise in one way given original director Roland Emmerich, who will step back into the same role for the new trilogy along with longtime collaborator Dean Devlin who will produce, had this to say at the 2013 Hero Complex Film Festival:
“It doesn’t go to me unnoticed that most movies are sequels, the successful ones are all sequels or superhero movies. [Stargate is] such a beloved film and you could do it so much better now as such a bigger idea… I have really a great idea how to redo this and in this first part plan certain ideas and things which kind of point to number two and three. It would be a great trilogy.” (source: La Times)
But having a hankering to do something in Hollywood, and actually getting the greenlight, and yes money, to do it are two completely different things.
It now appears that Emmerich’s desire to re-visit Stargate, armed of course with dazzling advances in CGI and some exciting new ideas, and the studios willingness to hand over the cash has aligned perfectly and we can look forward to more galaxy-spanning mythos-laden adventures.
Quite whether this will involve any of the original cast or follow on from the already-existing Stargate canon is unclear.
Stargate, which follows the adventures of joint scientific/military expeditions into the heavens thanks to the discovery of an ancient device capable of spanning whole galaxies with a single stable wormhole, has spawned an entire universe of its own since the release of the original movie back in 1994, and while Star Trek and Star Wars have shown that a new riff on the existing theme doesn’t have to slavishly adhere to what has gone before, you’d like to think that some nod will be given to the hard work done by those who followed in Emmerich’s wake.
It would be a shame to just cast aside Stargate SG1 …
And Stargate Atlantis …
And Stargate Universe …
And yes even an animated series Stargate Infinity …
But then if they do it right, it could give the franchise a whole new thrilling series of exciting and visually exciting new stories to tell and that can only be a good thing!
(source: Cnet and Hero Complex LA Times)