General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20266 min read

Stargate

Stargate is a military science fiction franchise centered on an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole, enabling near-instantaneous travel to a matching device elsewhere in the universe. It began with the 1994 theatrical film Stargate, conceived by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Carolco, and grew through three live-action television series, an animated series, two direct-to-video films, a web series, and tie-in novels, comics, and games.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Origin	Stargate film, directed by Roland Emmerich and written with Dean Devlin, released October 28, 1994; grossed $196.6 million worldwide on a $55 million budget³
Core premise	An ancient ring-shaped device creates a wormhole to a similar device elsewhere, allowing travel between distant points in space²
Flagship series	Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007), ten seasons and 214 episodes, briefly the longest-running North American science fiction show¹
Spin-offs	Stargate Atlantis (2004–2009, five seasons, 99 episodes) and Stargate Universe (2009–2011, two seasons, 40 episodes)⁴
Total canon episodes	353 episodes across the three live-action series as of the Stargate Universe finale on May 9, 2011¹
Rights holder	MGM, acquired by Amazon in 2022; a new series from Martin Gero was announced in November 2025 and canceled in June 2026⁵

The 1994 film

The film that began the franchise was simply titled Stargate. The film revealed an alien ring apparatus buried under the Giza plateau that could carry people to other planets throughout the galaxy, with Kurt Russell playing Col. Jack O'Neil, James Spader playing Dr. Daniel Jackson, and Jaye Davidson playing Ra.⁶^•⁷ It opened at number one in the United States on October 28, 1994.³

Emmerich and Devlin envisioned Stargate as a three-film series, but MGM chose to develop television spinoffs instead and excluded the original creators from SG-1's production.³ Between 1995 and 1999, five novels by Bill McCay, developed partly from Emmerich's own notes, continued the film's story; Devlin has stated he considers them canonical.³

The television era

Three years after the film, the Canadian writers Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner created Stargate SG-1 as a sequel for the television screen.¹ The series followed Stargate Command's soldiers and scientists, led by Richard Dean Anderson's Colonel Jack O'Neill, alongside Michael Shanks as Daniel Jackson, Amanda Tapping as Samantha Carter, and Christopher Judge as the alien warrior Teal'c, as they traveled to other worlds and faced the Egyptian-inspired Goa'uld, the Replicators, and the Ori.⁸ It ran for ten seasons and 214 episodes and briefly held the record for the longest-running North American science fiction show.¹ In 2019, Popular Mechanics ranked it the 14th best science fiction television show ever.⁹

Stargate Atlantis. In 2004, SG-1's first spin-off series, Stargate: Atlantis, moved the action to another galaxy, where the city of Atlantis had been located. Wright and Robert C. Cooper created it, applying the lesson they drew from SG-1: building a universe in which multiple storylines could be born and grow.¹^•¹⁰ The series lasted five seasons and 99 episodes, ending with the ancient city splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.⁴

Stargate Universe. The third live-action series, Stargate Universe (2009–2011), took a different approach, following the crew of the ship Destiny in serialized character drama in which survival, not exploration, becomes the mission.⁴ It ran two seasons and 40 episodes; its finale on May 9, 2011 left the crew in stasis, and the franchise went dark on television for over a decade.¹^•⁴

Other screen and print media

The franchise also includes the direct-to-video films Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum (both 2008), the animated series Stargate Infinity (2002–2003), and the prequel web series Stargate Origins (2018), along with video games, novels, comic books, magazines, and audiobooks.² Planned film projects never reached the screen: in April 2011, Wright announced that the proposed SG-1 film had been permanently shelved, along with planned Atlantis and Universe films and a crossover film combining all three series.⁹

The gate device in the fiction

Within the stories, stargates are devices built by the Ancients, an ancient race whose technology creates wormholes for near-instantaneous transportation between two distant points in space. The gates are known by different names across the universe, including Astria Porta in the Ancient language and Chappa'ai in Goa'uld.¹¹ The stargate found in Antarctica on Earth has been estimated to be over 50 million years old, and the gates used in the Destiny mission of Stargate Universe are older still.¹¹ A gate is designed to dial a single destination at a time, though the correlative update program can modify the dialing protocol to allow one gate to dial multiple gates in the network simultaneously.¹²

The Amazon era

After Amazon acquired MGM Studios in 2022, the company began developing new projects in the Stargate universe.¹³ In November 2025, Amazon announced a new series led by Martin Gero, a veteran of SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe who created Blindspot, with franchise figures Joseph Mallozzi and Brad Wright, original film creators Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, and producers Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse Pictures attached.⁵^•¹⁴ Gero framed the project as a continuation rather than a reboot, saying the show was "not here to undo what came before."¹³

The writers' room began on January 12, 2026, in Los Angeles, and filming was reportedly slated for late 2026, predominantly in London.⁵ In June 2026, Amazon canceled the project. According to reporting citing Variety, executives were concerned that Gero's take would not appeal beyond the franchise's already dedicated fanbase; former showrunner Joseph Mallozzi publicly disagreed with the reported reason.⁵^•¹⁵ No casting had been announced before the cancellation, and Gero remains under an overall deal at Amazon MGM Studios developing other projects.⁵

Legacy

The franchise ran nearly 15 uninterrupted years of television across three live-action series, one animated spin-off, and a late-stage web series, totaling over 350 episodes.¹⁶ Academic commentary has read SG-1 as a contemporaneous account of how digitality transformed western society in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the franchise's blend of military action, diplomacy, and mythology-based alien cultures has been credited with establishing a template that its spin-offs extended to other galaxies and to serialized survival drama.¹⁷^•⁴

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026