MGM is currently flush with cash, thanks to the success of franchises like James Bond, and The Hobbit, and now they're aiming for a three-peat by re-booting the Stargate franchise.
If you don't remember Stargate, it was the artistic peak for the team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin.
It starred Kurt Russell as a macho military man, and James Spader as a nerdy archaeologist who lead a team through an ancient alien portal right out of Ancient Aliens, and have to go through a lot of Chariots of the Gods nonsense to save the world from aliens dressed up like Egyptian gods.
The original movie was spun-off into three Canadian produced TV spin-offs, Stargate SG-1 which ran for like forever and a half on basic cable and syndicated reruns, and three relatively shorter lasting spin-offs from the spin-off Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: Universe, and a 1 season animated series called Stargate: Infinity.
Now let's look at the PROS & CONS!
PROS:
1. The franchise has a familiar name and the movie and the first TV spin-off has a fan base.
2. The plan of a big screen reboot of what looked like a moribund franchise worked for Star Trek.
CONS:
1. Is that fan base as dedicated as the ones that support Star Trek and Star Wars? The TV shows were a model of dwindling expectations and the last series, though it got some good reviews, didn't last very long.
2. Will that fan base, whose reaction to the news seems to be a shrug, go to the big screen reboot if it has NOTHING to do with the films and TV shows they knew and loved?
3. The Star Trek reboot sold a lot of tickets because they got JJ Abrams, who had tapped into America's love of lens flare, but the films were so expensive, the profit margins on them were relatively thin.
Does MGM have their own JJ Abrams waiting in the wings for this franchise? Can they take the thin profits from an obviously expensive project like the proposed trilogy?
Now I've proposed my own remake ideas for MGM before, a few times, but they don't seem to be listening to me. So let's play a game. You guys tell me if there are any pros & cons that I missed, and what MGM owned film would you remake and how.
It's a narrower, niche fanbase. Stargate was never as big as Star Trek, let alone a pop-culture-dominating phenom like Star wars. So they could make money off it if they ekep the costs low- which the odds are against, of course.
ReplyDeleteTough choice, perhaps a Logan's Run remake tried to capture some of the the dread Americans are feeling about health care especially end of life care.
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