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Stargate movie reboot now cancelled, says writer Dean Devlin

Just when ‘Stargate’ fans had a glimmer of hope about a new big screen outing, their dreams have been dashed.

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That is according to Dean Devlin, the writer and producer of this year’s ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’. He also penned the 1994 ‘Stargate’ movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader that was directed by Roland Emmerich.

Speaking to Empire (via Den of Geek), Devlin revealed that the proposed reboot, again helmed by Emmerich, had been canned.

“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.”

Despite there being an audience in place already due to the popularity of both the first movie and the successful TV series ‘Stargate SG1′, it appears both he and Emmerich had other commitments or lost interest.

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However, with ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ performing so badly at the box office this summer, there’s every chance potential producers and indeed production company were hard to come by.

‘Resurgence’ didn’t even make it past the $400 million mark at the global box office and cost a hefty $165 million to make. Taking into account marketing costs, a film usually needs to double its budget to break even, so the sci-fi blockbuster barely made anything.

Yet he still had ideas over how a rebooted film could work, free from the constraints of a major studio.

“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.”

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As with everything - ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ being a prime example - bringing back or continuing the story of classic sci-fi properties has to be done well. Otherwise you’ll seriously annoy your core fan base who are essentially the ones who’ll be spreading the good (or bad) word about it.

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Picture credit: Canal+