We’ve known that Roland Emmerich has been for a while, but while chatting with the press about Independence Day: Resurgence, he and producer Dean Devlin have been dropping some more hints about what’s next for the franchise.
The pair have long talked about how the first film was conceived of as a trilogy, and according to Variety, they’re working on the next film:
Now the duo are in active development on a reboot movie being produced by MGM and Warner Bros.. The film is being penned by “Resurgence” writers James A. Woods and Nicolas Wright, and is intended to kickstart the franchise that Emmerich and Devlin always hoped to create.
Interestingly, Devlin also says that the new film likely isn’t going to be a direct sequel to the original film: they’re going to go back to the beginning and start over.
“It’s not a story that can take place 20 years later. So the only way to really tell that trilogy is to go back from the beginning and start the story all over again.”
This makes it appear as though the project will really remake the original film, starting with the discovery of the gate and the secret mission that travels out to an alien world. The movie was followed by 1997’s Showtime series Stargate SG-1, which went on to include two additional shows, cumulatively running for over three hundred episodes.
Despite Emmerich noting that there could be elements of the film’s television sequel in the new film, Devlin said that they will be side-stepping the television universe:
Now that the pair are back on board, the franchise will sidestep the continuity of the series, but not because of sour grapes, Devlin insists.
“It was taken away from us, and it’s tough to have your children raised by other parents, even if they do a very good job. … For us, it’s not putting down what has been done. It’s to let us finish telling our story.”
Rebooting the original Stargate makes some amount of sense, even in an environment where reboots have become popular for ageing science fiction films. Stargate never quite had the same stature as that of its companions, Star Trek or Alien, and its following is largely tied up with the Stargate television franchise.
It will be sad to see the universe steer away from Stargate SG-1, because of the sheer size of what the SciFi Channel accomplished: growing an enormous television franchise from a single film. The depth of the world and its characters is going to be incredibly difficult to surpass.
On the other hand, starting the story from the beginning could be a good way to restart the entire universe, and provide some continuity of actors and give the entire franchise a fresh group of faces from which to rebuild.
[Variety]