Cooper, Wright Talk Stargate's Future

On the new official Stargate site, Robert C. Cooper, Brad Wright, and others give lengthy interviews about where the Stargate franchise is headed. Included in the RCC and BW portions are many new spoilers for the remainder of Season 10 of SG-1, the SG-1 movies, and big news on Atlantis casting. Those interviews appear to have been conducted in December, with Wright’s before Cooper’s. Since the site requires high bandwidth connection, and even then has a hard time getting through an entire interview, we provide a summary of the points of most interest here. Warning: major spoilers!

Robert C. Cooper

  • SG-1’s final episode, “Unending”, will have the team trapped on board a ship, within a time dilation field, for 50 years. We will see how the relationships might develop and evolve. It represents one possible future given a certain set of circumstances. RCC wrote and directed the episode because he wanted to be on set during the emotional final days of filming. He feels it is a fitting end to the 1-hour series era of SG-1. At the end of the episode, the events will be “undone”.
  • The pay-off of the Ori storyline will be in the first DVD movie, which RCC is writing and directing. He had planned it as an arc for Season 11, but will now resolve it in a “very exciting” two hours. MGM has financed the movies based only on projected DVD sales, but are looking for broadcast deals as well. The funding for each of the 2 DVD movies is more than it would be for 2 episodes, but still nowhere near a feature-type budget, so they will be using their creativity to make it look big on a TV-movie budget. All of the main cast have signed for the movie, and they have contacted RDA about appearing as O’Neill in one or both movies. No work on whether that will work out business-wise or not.
  • Because the first DVD movie will be a continuation of Season 10, the DVD will include a 1-hour special on the history of Stargate so that viewers who haven’t seen all of Stargate will know what is going on. The special will be called “Stargate Mythology” and will include material on how real-world ancient mythology has played into the Stargate shows.
  • The second movie is more of a standalone story, although, if the actors are available, it will bring back a lot of fan favorites. The intention is to get fans used to the idea of SG-1 movies, to whet their appetites for more.
  • The movies will not be tied to an exact length, so they can edit them to have all the scenes and shots that make sense for the stories, rather than being tied to 44:15 like they were for episodes. They will also be shot in widescreen 16×9 format without ‘protecting’ the center of the screen, for a movie-like feel.
  • RCC and BW will continue as executive producers of Atlantis even though Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie are the show-runners. RCC will be there every day in his office.
  • The movies will keep RCC and BW busy until the summer time. They are writing now, planning of 4 weeks of shooting for each starting in mid April, then the usual post-production.
  • In the meantime they are working on the concept of the 3rd series with MGM. If all goes well, it would go into production sometime in the summer for airing at the beginning of 2008. RCC would only say the series maintains the spirit of Stargate, but opens up a whole new “universe.” They have no idea where the series might air. It is too early to say anything like that.
  • Amanda Tapping will be joining the cast of Atlantis for 14 episodes in Season 4. He recognizes some SGA fans won’t be happy to have SG-1 characters crossing over, but he believes it will encourage SG-1 fans to watch and that AT is a great actress and Carter a very likable character.
  • RCC feels it is totally up to Sci Fi to schedule and promote Atlantis to make sure people know it’s on and watch it.

Brad Wright

  • The first SG-1 DVD movie will be called Stargate: The Ark of Truth. In it, the team will travel to the Ori galaxy. The Ori arc will end with this movie.
  • The second DVD movie will be called Stargate Continuum. It will be a time travel story. He wants to prove it could be the first in a string that could continue the SG-1 legacy. It will feature characters who are dead in current show canon, but can be brought back because of time travel. He would really like RDA to be in one or both movies, but it’s up to RDA and the business side to work it out. At the time of the interview, Beau Bridges was not yet signed for the movies. Wright hopes that Martin Wood will direct the second movie.
  • He thinks Season 3 of SGA was the best so far and hopes and expects Atlantis to go beyond Season 4. He is also very committed to helping and remaining involved.
  • He is very relieved they are making 24 hours of TV this year (20 hours of Atlantis plus 4 hours of DVD movies) instead of 40. That was a ‘stupid’ amount of work to do both shows at once for three years with only one additional writer.
  • He does not feel going direct to DVD for the movies is a bad thing. As home theaters become so good, more and more people prefer to watch movies on DVD. The 16×9 widescreen format gives them a lot more freedom to film in a movie style as well, rather than having to keep all the action in the center of the screen for 4×3 TV’s.
  • If the Stargate Worlds on-line game does well [financially], it will really help the franchise continue.
  • Amanda Tapping will be joining the cast. They have wanted to bring her over for a while, but with SG-1 getting renewed each year, they couldn’t do it.
  • Torri Higginson will be back for some period of time in Season 4, but she will be a recurring character (!). Wright said this in a rather surprising way: that Torri will be back in S4 for some episodes, as if that were good or unexpected news.

6 thoughts on “Cooper, Wright Talk Stargate's Future”

  1. Wonderful summary! I’m hoping the movies are successful because I’m just not ready to let go of Michael Shanks as Daniel Jackson!

  2. Well, I’m on board for the DVDs! 🙂 Plus, I’m intrigued about what they plan to do with the franchise away from the interference of those programming zeros at The Sci Fi Channel.

  3. I am sorry but I cannot accept that this piss poor finale for SG1 is the best that could be done.

    Has them trapped on a ship for 50 years WTF.

    I am sorry but that sounds as **** as the finale for ST Voyager I mean come on what is happening to TV nowadays.

    What happened to resolutions at the end of TV Series.

  4. i hate stargate is ending, after ten tears of fan support they leave us hanging, so they can make a couple of dvds to finish it off, and make some money. to me it really sucks. how about some closer on other episodes, like the 100 days where oneill is trapped on a planet after a metor hits it, and when he is rescued it leaves the impression the women is carring his child. or what about the oneill clone? make a dvd with the cast talking about all they have been through, and settle it all.

  5. Let’s not get too harsh on the ending. A cute closure (I mean ‘closer’) is the last thing you really want. If you were writing a story, a good one (such as with SG1), you would need to have some suspense. You can’t have that without an arc. Now, if they made a sentimental tear-jerking ending where everyone is happy and the world is safe forever, then there would be no grounding for an 11th season (unless you want the domesticated affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Samantha O’Neill making babies). Just because Sci-Fi (of whom we should be critical) canceled the show, does not mean that the series is necessarily over. RCC and BW, are slaves to the reality of television, and as much as I regret to inform you, do not have supernatural powers and can not predict the future of financially backed endeavors. By ending it the way they did (a tribute to the end of the 8th season with the time travel), they showed that they actually had hope for the future of Stargate and (maybe, just maybe) the SG1 team. If you want to say that they are just trying ‘to make some money’, then I doubt you are really a fan at all, or at least cannot think critically enough to understand how a good story works. Oh and PS, great idea on ‘The View’ starring the cast, ‘talking about all they have been through.’ Touching.

Comments are closed.