Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year Stargate is the latest movie to undergo the reboot treatment. Most reboots only retain the original creative minds for token executive producer credits, not so for Stargate as writer/producer Dean Devlin and writer/director Roland Emmerich are returning to their respective duties.

In a recent interview with the Portland Business Journal, producer Dean Devlin explained why they have opted for a reboot.   

“We did the original “Stargate” as an independent movie. It was a surprise success. Shortly before the movie came out, the financiers who were frightened the movie might not do well sold the film to MGM. When the film came out, it was a hit and spawned TV shows.

Of all the projects I’ve ever done, “Stargate” is the only one from the beginning intended to be a trilogy. We always wanted to do parts two and three, but the thinking was they didn’t want to do anything other than the TV series. So literally for 20 years I’ve been chasing this project. Twenty years later, we can’t really do part two. We have to start over from the beginning. So let’s reboot the series, put in all the things we couldn’t the first time, and set it up properly”.

Stargate SG-1 ran for and impressive ten seasons, spawning three spin-off shows (Atlantis, Universe and the short-lived animated series Infinity) and two TV movies. Given the wealth of back history created by the TV franchise, a clean slate is the most sensible way to go to forge a new trilogy. This won’t be the only former glory Devlin and Emmerich are planning on revisiting, before they get stuck in to Stargate they will focus on the sequel to Independence Day.

Despite the best efforts of Devlin and Emmerich they have been unable to lure Will Smith back to reprise his star-making role, luckily two versions of the script were developed at the time but it's a real shame Smith has ruled himself out. White House Down writer James Vanderbilt is currently working on the rewrite and is expected to stay on to help map out part three.