During his appearance yesterday at the Creation Burbank Convention, Michael Shanks informed the audience that Brad Wright cannot move forward on writing the third SG-1 movie because of the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Brad Wright has pitched his story idea to MGM, but he has to stop there. Although he’s Canadian, due to past writing jobs he is a member of the WGA, so he’s obliged to abide by the strike. The same is true for Robert C. Cooper. Wright and Cooper may continue their producer duties on Stargate, but they can’t write scripts for the third movie or other projects. Either someone not a member of the WGA will have to write the movie script, or it will need to wait for the strike to be settled.
Michael reiterated that Stargate Atlantis will not be greatly impacted by the strike. Of all their regular writers, only Carl Binder is a WGA member, and as Joe Mallozzi already said, Carl has left the studios to join the strike in L.A. The rest of the Stargate Atlantis writers are members of the Writers Guild of Canada only. Michael mentioned that Joe Mallozzi had called him to ask if he is interested in appearing as Daniel in “one or two” episodes of Atlantis Season 5. Michael is interested as long as Daniel isn’t killed off. 🙂
Michael also said production of Rage of Angels can move forward, because creator/writer Chris Judge is a member of the WGC only. Michael and Chris’s production company, Slacktwaddle, is currently in negotiations with MGM for the show, and that is the lengthiest part of the process, he said. Once the deal is in place, the show will be filmed in Canada, presumably Vancouver. Michael’s character, Lucifer, will be a recurring character. Michael is happy with this because it will leave him time for other projects.
A complete con report with pictures will follow soon!
This is great news! Stargate is just not the same without Daniel IMHO.
I agree, Berkenshaw. That was pretty much my reaction when I saw Season Six premiere on the Sci Fi Channel! I just hope that the story is a good one that uses Daniel’s incredible Stargate history to solve a problem. Poor Daniel, he needs to solve a problem, not be the one to start it like they seem to do a lot in the Stargate stories, especially on Atlantis.
I wonder if MGM will try to get a Canadian writer for the third movie. Maybe Christopher Judge can write it! 😉 Brad and Robert could add their notes as producers. 😉
I guess this strike will impact the third series as well.
I’m bummed a bit about the Lucifer role, but glad that Michael is looking to do other projects. Finding new roles might be hard with the strike going on, though.