It was only a few months ago that producer Dean Devlin spoke enthusiastically about rebooting the Stargate franchise with a trilogy directed by original director Roland Emmerich, even going so far as to hire Independence Day: Resurgence‘s writers to pen the script last year. Now, however, the Stargate reboot has been cancelled.
Speaking to Empire, Devlin said “It looked good for a couple of months, but now it’s not looking so good. There are just a lot of things that have to fire at the same time, and there was a moment where I thought it was all firing at the same time, and then it all kind of fell apart.”
He also spoke about the challenges at working within a studio culture that relies so heavily on blockbusters, hinting that was one reason Stargate has been cancelled. “It’s one of the reasons I prefer to work independently,” Devlin continued. “Listen, I think if we did Stargate right, the fans would like it and we could do something really good. But if we screw it up, they’ll reject it. As they should. But I kind of don’t want to do it if I think that we’ll screw it up, and that’s one of the things that’s holding us back. You’d have several studios involved and a lot of voices and, you know, you may make something great, but you also may have something that doesn’t resemble what you wanted to do. That kind of ‘collaboration’ is a terrifying aspect of the whole thing.”
One also has to wonder if Independence Day: Resurgence‘s underperformance at the box office and poor reception also factored into this decision. However, Devlin has another project lined up for himself that may have also affected the decision to cancel the reboot. Deadline reports that he will be making his directorial debut with the sci-fi fantasy Countdown, a spec written by Steve Altiere that Devlin and his company Electric Entertainment picked up.
Countdown will tell the story of “a boy fascinated by space travel who recruits his friends and an eccentric NASA engineer to hatch an unbelievable plan to try and save his dying father.” Devlin will also produce alongside Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan. No word yet on when this will start development, but check back here for more details later.
Originally published November 18, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
