{"id":953,"date":"2007-08-20T09:45:04","date_gmt":"2007-08-20T17:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/?p=953"},"modified":"2010-03-04T11:45:20","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T19:45:20","slug":"mcnamara-talks-with-judge-about-rage-of-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/mcnamara-talks-with-judge-about-rage-of-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"McNamara Talks with Judge About "Rage of Angels""},"content":{"rendered":"

In a two-part interview published in Mary McNamara’s blog, Christopher Judge<\/a> stated his reasons for writing the script for his pilot Rage of Angels<\/em>, “I truly want to be the lead in an hour formatted show and prove that a black lead can be commercially viable and sustainable in overseas markets.”<\/p>\n

Judge was told by Stargate SG-1<\/em> producer Brad Wright that if that’s what he wanted, he’d have to write it himself. And so, Judge did. According to him, he started writing the day after he was given notice that SG-1<\/em> had been cancelled.<\/p>\n

Judge is slimming down for his role and has grown out his hair, a very different look than what he had for Teal’c. He said, “I don’t want to remind anyone of Teal’c at all. I want to have two very separate and distinct characters.”<\/p>\n

Judge’s distinct character for Rage<\/em> is the angel Gabriel. Judge basically implies that Gabriel is no angel, as it were, since he’ll be defying the rules of Heaven and God himself when he falls to Earth. “When you think about what Gabriel’s issues are, he’s the wrath of god. Lucifer was God’s beloved, God’s favorite angel. Lucifer wanted to be a god himself, so he was cast out of heaven. Gabriel has to do all the dirty work knowing that God loves another more than him.”<\/p>\n

Lucifer will be played by Judge’s long-time friend and Stargate co-star Michael Shanks<\/a>. In a recent interview with SCI FI WEEKLY<\/a>, Shanks talked a little about the two actors’ upcoming roles: “It is a slight departure from what I’ve been playing for the last 10 years. With Christopher playing an angel, I mean, that’s a whole \u2014 you have no idea how ridiculous that is. So we are definitely going against type with this new project that we’re doing. MGM is going to finance the pilot for it, and we’ll have to wait and see what happens with it. But we are very excited about the future, and as evidence, after working together for 10-plus years, the idea we would want to go and do something together after this is a testament to our, I would say friendship, but I would say also more to our patience with each other.”<\/p>\n

Production of the pilot is being backed by MGM who count Stargate<\/em> as their second largest franchise (after James Bond). Senior Executive Vice President of Finance and Corporate Development Charlie Cohen has been a long-time fan of the Stargate<\/em> franchise and was instrumental in getting the approximately $14 million needed to produce the two direct-to-DVD movies, Stargate: The Ark of Truth<\/em> and Stargate: Continuum<\/em>. The world-wide success of Stargate<\/em> helped in making the decision in backing Judge in this endeavor. Judge said, “We’re walking into a network with two guys [Judge and Shanks] from the longest running scifi show in history whose show is still making product.”<\/p>\n

Helping to solidify the MGM deal was Brad Turner<\/a>, Emmy-winning producer and director for FOX TV’s hit show 24<\/em>. Judge said that he and Turner have similar goals for the show: “We agreed on everything. Creatively there were things I put in [the script] and I wasn’t sure that people would get and Brad got them immediately. It was just a very symbiotic relationship.”<\/p>\n

McNamara describes the movie as a “backdoor pilot”, which means, according to the definition in the TV IV wiki<\/a>, it will be “a standalone movie so it can be broadcast even if it is not picked up as a series.” Judge described Rage of Angels<\/em> as “Touched by An Angel<\/em> Meets 300<\/em>.” He then explained: “We’re going to recreate the war of the heavens and it will probably be one of the bloodiest battles that’s ever been shown on television. I thought it needed to be shot very much the way 300 was shot. That’s never been attempted on TV. The perception is: it’s too costly, too time consuming.” He credits Turner for his seeing how they could accomplish their goal, “We sat down and did a rewrite and it’s basically a shooting script. He had specific ideas to tweak things. And Brad walked into MGM and said this is what we want to do and here’s how we’re going to afford it. He dotted every i, crossed every t.”<\/p>\n

Whether or not Turner will be able to continue with the project as the series director and showrunner in case the pilot is picked up was a concern for Cohen, according to McNamara. Judge said that they’ll start filming the movie after Stargate Atlantis<\/em> wraps filming, but didn’t go into the reasons for this specific delay. Judge is to appear in a second-half season episode which is about to be filmed in Vancouver (episode 16, “Midway”), and any further involvement he might have in the show is currently not known. Even with this delay, Rage of Angels<\/em> has been a project that has seen a very quick track toward production. Judge commented on the process thus far: “It’s been enjoyable. For everything to come together in this business, this quickly – I’ve been blessed.”<\/p>\n

To read the full interview, visit Mary McNamara’s blog (two parts): Stargate’s Chris Judge, 24’s Brad Turner Partner for Rage of Angels<\/a>. For Shanks’ interview, which also includes comments from Amanda Tapping and Judge about Stargate<\/em> and future projects, visit SCI FI WEEKLY: Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge look back on 10 thrilling years of Stargate SG-1<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a two-part interview published in Mary McNamara’s blog, Christopher Judge stated his reasons for writing the script for his pilot Rage of Angels, “I truly want to be the lead in an hour formatted show and prove that a black lead can be commercially viable and sustainable in overseas markets.” Judge was told by … Continue reading “McNamara Talks with Judge About "Rage of Angels"”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press","tag-chris-judge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7320,"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions\/7320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stargate-sg1-solutions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}