Amazon has handed Stargate to a new showrunner — fans are calling it 'theft'
Four months ago Amazon pulled the plug on a Stargate show run by a man who'd worked on all three of the old ones. Now it has handed the gate to the woman who made WandaVision. Amazon MGM
Four months ago Amazon pulled the plug on a Stargate show run by a man who'd worked on all three of the old ones. Now it has handed the gate to the woman who made WandaVision.
Amazon MGM Studios is having another go at Stargate, and this time nobody from the original shows is driving. On 9 October 2026, Deadline reported that Jac Schaeffer, creator of WandaVision and Agatha All Along, is developing a new series under her overall deal with the studio, and that a writers' room has already opened in New York. Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse Pictures executive produce. There's no series order, no plot and no cast. There is, however, a comment section.
"I love Stargate and was extremely disappointed when the newest version suddenly got shelved… There'd been a petition. New blood is important, but this feels like theft."
— a reader under Deadline's report
Strong word for a TV development deal with no actors attached. Then again, the fans have a fairly specific idea of who's been robbed, and it isn't Schaeffer's agent.
The reboot that was already in pre-production
The previous attempt wasn't a pitch on a napkin. In November 2025, Prime Video gave a straight-to-series order to Stargate from Martin Gero, the Blindspot creator who had written and produced on SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. Brad Wright and Joseph Mallozzi, the franchise's old guard, signed on as consulting producers. This was the rare reboot with the people who actually built the thing.
- November 2025: series order, Gero as showrunner.
- June 2026: after a 20-week writers' room, and with the show in pre-production in the UK, Amazon pulls it. The reported reason: executives worried it "would not have broad appeal beyond the franchise's already dedicated fanbase".
- October 2026: a new room, a new showrunner, a fresh start from zero.
In between, the fans did what the executives suspected they would. A #SaveStargate petition passed 100,000 signatures, and somebody paid for a banner to fly over Amazon MGM's Culver City lot. Which, to be fair, is exactly the dedicated fanbase Amazon was worried about.
Amazon cancelled Stargate for appealing only to Stargate fans, and the Stargate fans proved the point by flying a plane over the office.
The new boss, then, is the opposite of a franchise veteran by design. Schaeffer's calling card is taking a Marvel property and turning it into a sitcom pastiche, which is either the broad-appeal fresh eyes Amazon wants or the reason half the online reactions boil down to "DOA".
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Four years of owning the gate
Stargate came to Amazon with MGM, which it bought for $8.45 billion in a deal that closed in 2022. In the four years since, the franchise has produced an announcement teaser for a cancelled show and two writers' rooms. SG-1 ran for ten series and Atlantis for five more; between them and Universe, the gate stayed open on telly from 1997 to 2011. Amazon has so far matched none of it.
Other readers went further back. "How is this possible without Emmerich and Devlin?" one asked, which is a bit of a stretch: Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin made the 1994 film and had nothing to do with the 14 years of television that followed. The franchise has survived its creators walking off once already. Whether it survives a writer who has never touched it is the question Amazon is now paying a New York writers' room to answer.
Another reader skipped the debate entirely: "Rebooting these kind of shows is pointless." Amazon disagrees, twice in one year, and has yet to find out who it's actually making the thing for.
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