Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich owned the 1990s when it came to big budget scifi with STARGATE and INDEPENDENCE DAY. Now, with both of those franchises getting sequels or reboots, Devlin is right back in every conversation as fans process the prospect of these new films. With STARGATE already having spawned a number of television series spin-offs, it seemed odd to do away with all of that established continuity for a new trilogy of films. But, according to Devlin, the TV series are the exact reason why STARGATE is being rebooted.
In an interview with the Portland Business Journal, Devlin explained exactly why the independently financed STARGATE was never completed the way he and Emmerich had originally intended.
“The Stargate thing is a different story. We did the original Stargate as an independent movie. It was a surprise success. Shortly before the movie came out, the financiers who were frightened the movie might not do well sold the film to MGM. When the film came out, it was a hit and spawned TV shows.
Of all the projects I’ve ever done, Stargate is the only one from the beginning intended to be a trilogy. We always wanted to do parts two and three, but the thinking was they didn’t want to do anything other than the TV series. So literally for 20 years I’ve been chasing this project. Twenty years later, we can’t really do part two. We have to start over from the beginning. So let’s reboot the series, put in all the things we couldn’t the first time, and set it up properly.”
Devlin and Emmerich were not directly involved with the various STARGATE television series, so the plot ideas and direction the characters went likely strayed so far from their initial vision for the story that there would be no way to tell the tale the way they wanted. By rebooting, STARGATE may hold the same basic concept of portals between worlds, but everything else could be different. I think I may like that idea better than retreading the same stories and characters we have already seen. Hopefully Devlin’s confidence in the original plot is worth all of the effort being put into this reboot.