New StarGate series Prime Video.

[The Wormhole]

The goal appears to be appealing to people who are not already Stargate fans

Well, naturally. Every time there's a revival of a new property the goal should be "how do we bring in new fans?" as that is how the brand expands and flourishes. Become a proverbial tree. Focusing on appealing only to the existing fans leads to Picard S3, the proverbial ouroboros.

 

[David cgc]

Joe Mallozzi seemed to think they’d threaded the needle. Maybe the script will leak and we’ll be able to judge for ourselves.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Full tweet:

Sadly, it's true. Amazon has elected not to move forward with the new Stargate series.

There's not much I can add beyond confirming what's happened. But I will say this...

Creator Martin Gero developed a new Stargate series over two years, ultimately crafting a show that offered a fresh jumping-on point for new viewers while deeply respecting existing canon. It was a series that avoided the pitfalls of several modern remakes and reboots by fully embracing the core of its predecessors: action, adventure, exploration, wonder, heart, humor, and found family. And based on that creative vision, the new Stargate series was greenlit in November of 2025.

As of today, officially, that original vision is no more. We'll never get the opportunity to introduce you to that world and those characters - or reintroduce you to, and check in with, some familiar faces from the past.

My heart breaks. For the incredibly talented writers who worked tirelessly to bring this show to life. For Martin who maintained an unwavering positive outlook throughout despite the challenges, and who always strove to make a show that would honor the fans while welcoming a new audiences. And for the long-suffering Stargate fandom who waited so long and came so close to getting a show they truly would have loved.

 

[bdub76]

Stargate had the humor element. That is definitely essential to me. It's why I didn't like SGU.

 

[Noname Given]

Joe Mallozzi seemed to think they’d threaded the needle. Maybe the script will leak and we’ll be able to judge for ourselves.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Full tweet:

From the Deadline article linked in a post above:

...The decision to pull the plug came late in the process — I hear the show had completed a 20-week writers room and was in pre-production in the UK. It was explained with the new series’ vision and creative direction, which allegedly no longer aligned with Amazon’s programming strategy.

The differences apparently ran so deep, they required an outright axing vs. retooling the existing version of the project by giving notes to Gero, a veteran showrunner who had been signed into an overall deal by Amazon MGM Studios for the purpose of him spearheading Stargate...

I wasn't a huge Stargate fan, but I was looking forward to seeing what they'd do, so yeah this news is disspointing.

 

[JD]

I love when the Hollywood execs do this kind of shit. They brought in the guys who made the old shows to continue on from where the old shows left off, and then got mad that they continued on from where the olds shows left off. Here's an idea, maybe if they wanted something that was new and different, they should have hired new people to do something different, instead of hiring the old team to do what they did before.

 

[David cgc]

I love when the Hollywood execs do this kind of shit. They brought in the guys who made the old shows to continue on from where the old shows left off, and then got mad that they continued on from where the olds shows left off. Here's an idea, maybe if they wanted something that was new and different, they should have hired new people to do something different, instead of hiring the old team to do what they did before.

It was apparently different people that did the hiring versus the firing, which is another old Hollywood story. Nobody wants to pull off any successes that started under the old regime, so the old guys get the credit.

 

[JD]

Ah, that makes more sense then.

 

[thribs]

And they break this news just at the same time the new God of War game is revealed.

 

[USS Firefly]

Damn this is bad news, I was so looking forward for this new show

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Man, this is a terrible news. Cancelled for being too much like what everyone wants.

It's is really damn bleak for fans of space opera right now.

 

[TheAussieGonz]

If Disney is anything by which to go, streaming may be on the decline altogether, in favour of feature films.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I guess television had a good run.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Cancelled for being too much like what everyone wants.

That's both unsupported and unlikely.

If we're being hyperbolic, it's more likely that it was canceled for being too much like what no one wants.

In other words, exaggerations aside, it was probably going to cost more than it was going to be worth.

 

[Paul Weaver]

I guess television had a good run.

Still got 14 years left

 

[Christopher]

Man, this is a terrible news. Cancelled for being too much like what everyone wants.

No, apparently it was cancelled for being the previous executives' project. What it was actually about probably didn't matter. A lot of these decisions are more about internal politics than story content.

 

[Verteron]

Given the level of good will and excitement that this project got when it was announced from the old fanbase, Amazon MGM has burned its bridges now.

If they do eventually put something out, we'll all be watching to nitpick, not watching with love. Same story as Abrhams/Kurtzman Trek - which - regardless of how much we like some of the shows - has not brought in the 'new' audience that Paramount so desperately wanted. Those shows have not become the cultural touchstone that the old shows managed to become.

And if their 'new audience' is the same audience as Rings of Power or Wheel of Time, then good luck, on those shows the numbers are cratering due to poor world-building and poor reception from lovers of the books or other adaptations.

I like Rings of Power, but it could have been so much more.

 

[Terror Door]

So this is the third recent cancellation of a reboot of a 90s SFF great after Babylon 5 and Buffy. Will Ryan Coogler's X-Files be next I wonder? Success at the Oscars did not help Chloé Zhao's project after all.

 

[danellis]

It really needs an Eleventh Hour or a Rose equivalent episode, where the new viewer is brought in without having to know a lot about the series.

A new Stargate show runs a risk of demanding that the viewer watch all of the back catalog. Doctor Who has gone down this rabbit hole too many times with stories requiring watching really old stuff.

I do like how Leverage: Redemption and Librarians: The Next Chapter have handled their previous shows.

I think this is particularly the case with StarGate: the starting point of any new series (I suppose unless it were set a significant distance into the future) would necessarily rely so much on the groundwork laid by previous shows (even if you were exploring completely different planets, the situation on earth would still be so reliant on that) that it's screaming out for a reboot.


dJE

 

[Christopher]

So this is the third recent cancellation of a reboot of a 90s SFF great after Babylon 5 and Buffy. Will Ryan Coogler's X-Files be next I wonder? Success at the Oscars did not help Chloé Zhao's project after all.

The majority of projects in development never get made, for various reasons. It's a competitive business, a lot of different projects competing for a finite amount of resources and schedule slots. There have been many proposed revivals and reboots over the decades that never got past the pilot stage or never even reached the pilot stage, e.g. Tim Minear's proposed Alien Nation reboot, or the attempt some years back to reboot Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes. I think there were two separate attempts at reboots of The Time Tunnel. And then there are revivals/reboots that do finally get made, but only after several previous attempts failed, e.g. Lost in Space or Battlestar Galactica. So it's best to remember that everything is tentative until it's actually on the air, and even then the odds are against it lasting long.

Although it does seem that the industry as a whole is worse off than it used to be, with fewer projects in general getting made or succeeding, due to the changes brought about by streaming, the economic situation, and the like. The frenzy of mergers and acquisitions of movie/TV studios doesn't help either.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Normally I don't think reboot is the answer. With Trek there's no reason you need to reboot - just create a new story set on a different ship. Trek has never paid attention to massive new technology -- from Soliton Waves to deaging transporters, they are all forgotten by the next week. You have a ship, a crew, some aliens, a morality tale. You can reuse the aliens that exist in Trek - Vulcans, Klingons, Cardassians. You can add new ones. You can dip into the past, but not too much.

Or just start from scratch -- Orville did it. "Ship flying around the galaxy having weekly adventures" is not unique to Trek. If you don't want to base your show on the 1000 episodes of history that already exist, then don't, invent your own stuff.

Whether that type of show would get enough viewers to justify the cost in in the 21st century is another question.

However the concept of SG1 does mean you'd need to reboot. SG1's universe at the time of SGU was very different to the time of Children of the Gods. It was no longer a scrappy team of half a dozen underdogs using modern technology. Now you could continue that story - sure, but you aren't telling the same stories of the Showtime era SG1.

I just don't think you'd be able to recapture the chemistry which made SG1 so great, even in the 90s, let alone with today's television reality, and I think rebooting would just add cost and unrealistic expectations. You're not just competing with SG1, you're competing with a rose-tinted version of SG1.