Stargate, the famous space-set television series that was a staple of our television screens in the early 2000s, is making a roaring comeback. Amazon, the giant media and retail conglomerate eyeing to become the biggest streaming company of all time, announced a new Stargate series a few weeks ago for its Amazon Prime streaming service. With one of the biggest TV franchises set for a spectacular comeback, we think now is the perfect time to dive into the fascinating history of this franchise and see how the new endeavour came about.
While almost everyone is familiar with the Stargate TV shows, few know that the Stargate franchise has its origin in the 1994 Roland Emmerich film of the same name. Starring James Spader and Kurt Russell, 1994’s Stargate saw scientists and engineers study an interstellar teleportation device found in Egypt. The discovery of this fascinating find leads them to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship Ra.
No one, not even its creators, could predict how popular the film would become. Each franchise entry would then have its story built around the Stargate, a ring-shaped device built by an ancient intergalactic race of beings that allows almost instantaneous travel across vast distances via wormholes that can be connected between any two Stargates on the network.
Made on a budget of $55 million, the 1994 film was a great success, grossing close to $200 million. Disappointed by the lack of progress on this front, Dean Devlin (the rights holder of the film) sold his rights to MGM in 1997. With the film sequels unable to take off, MGM hired Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner to create a television series titled Stargate SG-1. As fate would have it, SG-1 would serve as a sequel to the film, thus ensuring the franchise continued on the small screen.
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Stargate SG-1 ran for 10 seasons and expanded the franchise with Stargate Atlantis in 2004, Stargate Universe in 2009, and the prequel web series Stargate Origins in 2018. During that time, the universe grew even further through canonical comic books, video games, and direct-to-DVD films like Stargate: Children of the Gods, The Ark of Truth, and Continuum, which served as a true epilogue to the original series after its decade-long run., as a television franchise, was thriving, garnering a cult following among fans who continued to show up year after year.
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New Stargate series on Amazon
As the franchise wound down on television by the late 2000s, there were rumors that Roland Emmerich and MGM were resurrecting the Stargate films once more. At this time, CGI had progressed sufficiently in a way that made more sense both artistically and financially. Everything finally came together, and in September 2013, they officially confirmed a new Stargate project. During an interview with Digital Spy, Emmerich made it known that a reboot was indeed in development as a new trilogy.
A year later, MGM and Warner Bros. announced their partnership to reboot the franchise, sharing both the creative vision and financial risk of such a high-budget project. The plan included a new Stargate trilogy, with Roland Emmerich directing, Dean Devlin producing, and Nicolas Wright and James A. Woods attached as writers. However, this would all fizzle out in a couple of years when Devlin sombrely announced in 2016 that all development on the films and series was on hold.
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New Stargate series on Amazon
However, the franchise had a new lease on life when Amazon acquired the entire MGM studio in 2022. Hoping to recuperate its investment through focus on its core franchises, Amazon set about developing new installments for most of the franchises owned by MGM. In November 2025, it officially announced that more Stargate was on the way, with a new series debuting sometime in the next three years. Martin Gero was announced as the showrunner of this as yet untitled series. Eagled-eyed fans would remember Gero as a franchise veteran with writing credits on all three live-action Stargate series. The writers’ room will assemble in January 2026, and Gero confirmed that production should take about two years.
Further credence was lent to the project when it was announced that Brad Wright, co-creator of the prior series, and Joe Mallozzi, long-time Executive Producer on the franchise, would also be returning in a contributing producer role,s while Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, who created the 1994 film, will be executive producers as well. While few details are currently known about the series and its setting, it will not be a reboot and new viewers will still be able to tap into the story despite the complex backstories.
So, the new Stargate series will be a sequel/continuation of what came before as opposed to a completely new reboot. This is exciting, as reboots almost always don't work; why change the formula when the previous iteration works perfectly fine? Continuing the previous story also means existing fans of the franchise will have no problem tuning into the new series, as they already know what has transpired before.
Everyone seems to be excited for more Stargate, and why shouldn't they be? Stargate defined television in the early 2000s and was the pinnacle of cultural zeitgeist during that time. With the heavy firepower of Amazon behind it, there is a significant chance that the new Stargate series does indeed end up happening. Rebooting existing MGM franchises is reportedly a top priority for Amazon, and the company seems to be going all in to dominate film and television for the next few decades. Therefore, we are pretty excited for more Stargate, and we hope it is as good as we think it could be.
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New Stargate series on Amazon
