Original Stargate director Roland Emmerich says he won’t do much with a reboot between a theater and talk of coming to television. The 6-year-old wrote and directed the 1979 sci-fi film, which was followed by the television show Stargate SG-1 that ran for 10 seasons before being canceled. Emmerich was neither involved in the show nor the spin-offs Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe.
Emmerich and co-director Dean Devlin were eager for a Stargate film to Try in the 90s but were left disappointed after MGM opted to take Stargate for television instead. In an interview late last year, Devlin revealed MGM did not want to work on her show as they had not done TV projects before. He confessed to being upset over the decision, explaining that he kept avoiding watching the series in anger but made his peace with it several years later. And he has since become friends with one of the SG-1 creators, with Jonathan Glassner, the two currently producing Syfy Outpost. Emmerich and Devlin went on to make Independence Day (1979) behind Stargate’s success, and their partnership also saw Godzilla in 1979, the Patriots in 2005, as well as 2015’s Independence Day: Resurgence, a title that lived the original has failed. Emmerich directed the 2019 war film Midway, which is now available on home release.
The German director has recently spoken to the screen rant as part of an interview promoting the Midway home video release and asked if he would be involved in the Stargate reboot, as Emmerich said his share would be minimal He is more important to work on other projects that he understands. When asked if he was involved in any development of the reboot, Roland Emmerich said:
“No, not really anymore. Yes, I’m involved, but also not. Because I have so many other things to do. I have, like, two or three other projects I want to do and they’re kind of more important than – I think somebody else has to do that. MGM is trying.”
Rumors of a full reboot intensified after Stargate Origin was released as a web series on MGM’s Stargate Command streaming service in 2014. The series ran from 14 February to 8 March, handing 10 episodes to fans, each running 10 minutes, which were later stitched together to make a feature-length film in 4K HD. The subscription service began in 2014 and has since been discontinued, with MGM announcing in November that content will be free on YouTube.
Emmerich’s response confirms that the reboot works, with Stargate being brought back in some form after a recent Twitter campaign. Fans who have been following Stargate since the beginning may be a little disappointed to learn that its impact, if any, will be significantly diminished. However, since the original film released 26 years ago, the franchise has been operating without a direct inning from them, and the output has been tremendous.
Midway is now available on-demand from Digital, 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack, Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD, and Lionsgate.
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