Willa Rowe is a contributing writer at Polygon, covering games and entertainment. She is a New York-based journalist and critic whose work has been featured in Kotaku, Digital Trends, the A.V. Club, GamesRadar+, and more. She also co-hosts the Girl Mode podcast.
Hope for the sci-fi show’s reboot at Amazon springs eternal
Fans have been waiting a long time for Stargate to return. The sci-fi show was last on TV in 2011 and had a short-lived web series in 2018, meaning the franchise has been largely dormant for almost a decade. That finally seemed like it would change when Amazon announced in November 2025 that Stargate would return with series veteran Martin Gero as showrunner. The excitement lasted until June of this year, when Amazon scrapped Gero’s reboot. Now Amazon is back with a glimmer of hope for Stargate‘s future.
As reported by Deadline this summer, Amazon has begun the search for a new writer to lead the company’s Stargate reboot. This is good news for fans as it shows Amazon is still interested in bringing Stargate back despite the cancellation of Gero’s series. This supports previous reports from Variety that Amazon has a continued interest in furthering the Stargate franchise.
Allegedly, Gero’s take on the reboot did not align with Amazon’s expectations as it catered too much to die-hard fans of the series. Gero previously worked on Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe, so he clearly had deep knowledge and passion for the extended universe the previous iterations of the franchise had built. In looking for a new writer, Amazon is reportedly looking to hire someone who does not have a history with Stargate and would be able to bring a new perspective to it that would appeal to a wider audience.
What is Stargate?
While the Stargate franchise is best known for its many TV series over the years, it began with Rolan Emmerich’s 1994 film Stargate. The film starred James Spader and Kurt Russell as members of an Air Force team sent to another world via the titular sci-fi travel device. A show, Stargate SG-1, launched three years later and picked up where the movie left off but recast Russell and Spader’s characters with new actors. The show followed the continued exploration of new planets via the Stargate and expanded the original movie’s lore over ten seasons. SG-1 also spawned two spinoff shows (Atlantis and Universe), and two direct-to-DVD films.
Most recently, Stargate Origins was a web series that released in 2018 but was quickly axed due to poor reception. Amazon acquired the franchise when it purchased MGM Studios in 2022 and immediately began looking into developing new projects in the universe. While Gero is no longer attached to the upcoming reboot, he will continue to develop projects for Amazon while the company moves ahead with its search for a writer.
