Dean Devlin Teases STARGATE 2 & 3

Oh, poor Dean Devlin. Banished to television, Devlin is still hoping to get into Hollywood's good graces even after accepting the blame for the failure of the 1998 remake of GODZILLA (the gig that effectively put an end to his big screen writing career). Now, he’s trying to pimp some STARGATE sequels. And by STARGATE sequels, I mean sequels to the original film and not to the countless television spin-offs that the original film spawned. And by that, I mean “Hey, let’s turn a nearly twenty year old movie into an unnecessary trilogy!”

Here’s a little bit of what Devlin had to say about STARGATE 2 & 3 to THR:

"Stargate has always had this empty hole. When we made the first one, we always intended on doing part two and three, and we were prevented for years. And our hope is that we can get another chance at Stargate and tell the entire story we wanted to tell."

That remark is pretty much a minor rehash, like this article, of a statement he made to Collider awhile back:

"We actually wrote it as a trilogy of movies, but we were never able to do parts two and three. So our hope is, now that the series is starting to wind down, that maybe it will be time to actually get to do parts two and three. We're still hopeful that we'll get to come back and tell the rest of that story. I think it'll change a little bit from our original idea since so many years have passed. We wanted to explore the idea of how the Stargates were built originally, and where else in the universe they exist, and why they exist - and where else they exist on Earth. We had really planned out, as a trilogy of films, to allow this mythology to grow bigger and bigger."

Devlin goes on to say that he’d bring back the actors from the movie and …not the series? Say what?

Listen, I’m not a hardcore STARGATE fan by any means. My knowledge of the series is mostly based on the first film which I find to be a rather enjoyable piece of sci-fi nonsense. Outside of that, I’ve have no directly acquired info. I know there were four shows (SG-1, ATLANTIS, UNIVERSE, and INFINITY), a handful of direct-to-DVD films and a bunch of other shit that I really just don’t have time to list. Just know that STARGATE is a MASSIVE franchise and it has wayyy past the original film.

Which is why it confuses me Devlin would want to simply pump out a pair of sequels to the first film and bring back Kurt Russell as Jack O’Neil and James Spader as Daniel Jackson. Love Russell and Spader. I do. But I think (actually, I’m pretty damn sure) most people now associate those characters with Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks from the TV show. Bringing back Russell and O’Neil would add more confusion to a situation that is already confusing thanks to Devlin wanting to ignore everything that followed the movie in favor of creating a trilogy where a trilogy wasn’t warranted …and, seriously, hasn’t STARGATE pretty much already played itself out? Is there anything else to be said about these intergalactic portals already not covered by the feature film, the shows, the video games, the animated series, the comics, the novels or any of the other countless spin-offs?

Long story short, this is dumb idea. The original film is good but I just don’t see a market for two sequels built exclusively for it. Any future STARGATE spin-offs, whether they be film or television, need to be built using the mythos established by the television series. The fans deserve that.

USELESS KNOWLEDGE: Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were sued for stealing the storyline of STARGATE from a student of Egyptology named Omar Zuhdi who submitted the story to them about ten years before the movie was made (they "rejected" the story at the time). Zuhdi even had a well-respected Egyptologist from Johns Hopkins University vouch for him, since he put his own theories into the story. The only differences between the story and the movie are slight name variations. The issue was finally settled out of court.

[via THR and Collider]