In Reading a Show’s Life: Many Factors Weigh into Deciding the Fate of a Popular Series, Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn of Multichannel News talked with Sci Fi president Dave Howe about building the Stargate franchise:
THE SPIN FACTOR
Creating a spinoff of a series can certainly help bolster a franchise’s longevity. For its part, Showtime has tapped Chaiken for an untitled L Word spinoff, in which the character of Alice Pieszecki (played by actress Leisha Hailey) moves on.
“I was especially interested because the way the challenge came to me was, ‘Let’s do a very different show,’ and that’s what makes me think it might actually work,” Chaiken said. “Often an audience, particularly fans of a show, will wind up being disappointed that the new show isn’t the old show. But when you’re doing something completely different, you can side-step some of those expectations.”
Another key is having a really strong creative vision, said Tomassi Lindman. “And having strong writers and strong producers, the people who are going to bring those great ideas and fresh storylines that keep a show going season after season,” she added.
Such a strong vision led Sci Fi to give the green light to executive producer Ronald Moore’s Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica; and to co-executive producers Brad [Wright] and Robert Cooper’s Stargate: Universe, the third series in the long-running Stargate franchise.
“This was a creative call to move Stargate Atlantis into [made-for-television] movies and then to launch Stargate: Universe,” said Sci Fi president Dave Howe. “Stargate SG-1 went 10 years; Stargate Atlantis is now in its fifth season; and the producers looked at the stories and how it played out and how many more iterations of that story felt right and we totally agreed with them.
“Stargate Atlantis had been great, but it was now time to think about the next chapter.”
The holy grail in terms of media and entertainment these days is franchise-building, according to Howe.
“We’re focused on it. Hollywood theatrical movies are focused on it, the level of investment that is required to develop and launch a series is, from a marketing perspective, huge,” he said. “The difficulty in terms of breaking out and attracting and sustaining that audience, if you can create something that is franchise-able, then the business model is much more powerful and much more long-term, and so much more consistent and viable, and that’s the business we’re all in.”
Sci Fi Channel currently shows reruns of Stargate SG-1, but didn’t have a say in the production of the previous SG-1 movies. This may change with the production of the third SG-1 movie, currently being penned by Brad Wright and Carl Binder. According to Thomas Vitale, senior VP of programming and original movies at Sci Fi, the network is “very interested in partnering with MGM to do additional SG-1 movies as well, and we’re talking about it.” If Sci Fi partners with MGM for the third movie, then the movie will most likely premiere on the channel before being distributed on DVD by MGM.
This is the type of arrangement that Sci Fi has with MGM to produce the first Atlantis movie, being written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie. The script is still in its early stages, and filming the movie is set to start in the late spring or early summer, according to Amanda Tapping. Both the SG-1 movie and the SGA movie will be filmed at or around the same time, allowing crossover possibilities for Tapping, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Judge. Sci Fi plans to air the movie after the first half of Stargate Universe has premiered. This would put the movie’s debut in the last quarter of 2009.
In the meantime, episodes in the final season of Stargate Atlantis continue to premiere on Fridays at 9 pm Eastern (with a repeat at 11 pm). The next episode to be shown is “The Prodigal” on November 7, as the Sci Fi Channel is planning a large Halloween celebration next Friday, October 31, with their Ghost Hunters.
Stargate Universe is currently casting, building their sets, and outlining episode scripts. Co-creators and co-showrunners Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper will be joined by creative consultants Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, who also plan to write a few scripts. Filming will start in February 2009 and the two-hour pilot will premiere on the Sci Fi Channel in the summer of 2009.
Stargate Worlds, the MMORPG, is also moving along, having just started closed beta on October 15, and is scheduled for release in early 2009.
Keep up with the Stargate franchise here at Solutions and in our Stargate Wiki, which is updated with production and spoiler information for the television and movie series.