Dean Devlin has confirmed ‘Stargate’ remake plans have fallen through.
The 54-year-old American screenwriter wrote and produced the original 1994 film alongside Roland Emmerich who directed the movie.
Since then they have gone on to make three live action television series and one animated show while the extended ‘Stargate’ universe also includes numerous novels and comic books.
Although MGM and Warner Bros. Pictures partnering with Emmerich and Devlin, for a brand new trilogy, the reboot is off.
In an interview with Empire magazine, Devlin said: "It looked good for a couple of months, but now it’s not looking so good. There are just a lot of things that have to fire at the same time, and there was a moment where I thought it was all firing at the same time, and then it all kind of fell apart."
Devlin – who has just finished working on a third series of TV programme ‘The Librarians’ – blames the filmmaking process, driven by numbers and an idea for a franchise rather than the project itself, for the remake collapsing.
He said: "It’s one of the reasons I prefer to work independently. Listen, I think if we did ‘Stargate’ right, the fans would like it and we could do something really good. But if we screw it up, they’ll reject it. As they should. But I kind of don’t want to do it if I think that we’ll screw it up, and that’s one of the things that’s holding us back."
A lot has changed in the movie industry since the original ‘Stargate’ film – which starred Kurt Russell, James Spader and
Jaye Davidson – was produced independently without the support of a major film studio and Devlin says re-creating the blockbuster today would see more constraints placed on him.
Devlin explained: "You’d have several studio’s involved and a lot of voices and, you know, you may make something great, but you also may have something that doesn’t resemble what you wanted to do. That kind of ‘collaboration’ is a terrifying aspect of the whole thing."
Devlin will be producing and writing ‘Countdown’ after he finishes his collaboration with David Tennant on ‘Bad Samaritan’.
The film is written by Steven Altiere and focuses on a teenager who is obsessed with NASA and space travel but learns his father is dying. The teen turns to a former NASA engineer and his best friends to come up with a plan to save his dad’s life.
Dean Devlin: Stargate remake is off
