'Stargate' Remake Finds Its Writers (Exclusive)
4:38 PM PST 2/3/2015 by Borys Kit

Stargate, the relaunch of the 1990s Roland Emmerich sci-fi film property from MGM and Warner Bros., has found its writers.

Nicolas Wright and James A. Woods are in final negotiations to pen the script of what is intended to be the first of a trilogy that Emmerich is slated to direct. Dean Devlin, who co-wrote the original movie with Emmerich, is producing.

The duo are relatively new writers and they recently worked with Emmerich writing on Fox’s Independence Day 2, with the studio greenlighting the movie off their draft. Emmerich warmed up to Wright and Woods when his Centropolis Entertainment banner picked up a secret action thriller from the duo.

Stargate told of the discovery of a circular device that creates a wormhole allowing for scientists and military person to a distant world, where they discover an enslaved people who are descendants from ancient Egyptians.

The movie, which starred Kurt Russell and James Spader, launched several TV series.

Wright and Woods are repped by WME. Wright is additionally repped by Mel McKeon and Laura Meyones at McKeon-Myones Management. Woods is managed by Christina Karakasidis at Thruline Entertainment.

Oh, Stargate, why hast thou forsaken us? Despite the fact that that 1994 film from director Roland Emmerich and writer/producer Dean Devlin gave us three live action and one animated television series, plus a wide variety of novels and comic books that fans happily consumed, the franchise now seems to feel too above us to give any more. This despite the fact we’d been teased with rumblings of MGM and Warner Bros partnering with Emmerich and Devlin for a brand new trilogy. But now, in an exclusive interview with Empire, Devlin reveals that plans for a remake have fallen through.

“It looked good for a couple of months, but now it’s not looking so good,” offers Devlin, guiding force of The Librarians television series, returning for its third season next week. “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.”

He attributes much of the blame to the current system of moviemaking, where everything is driven by numbers and a desire for the idea of a franchise without the same sort of attention being paid to the product itself. “It’s one of the reasons I prefer to work independently,” he says. “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.”

The original Stargate was actually produced independently without the backing of a major studio, which granted the filmmakers an extraordinary amount of freedom. Today, Devlin notes, the situation would be very different: “You’d have several studios 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.”

He attributes much of the blame to the current system of moviemaking, where everything is driven by numbers and a desire for the idea of a franchise without the same sort of attention being paid to the product itself. “It’s one of the reasons I prefer to work independently,” he says.