Stargate (often stylized in all caps) is a military science fiction media franchise owned by Amazon MGM Studios.

The franchise is based on the idea of an alien wormhole (specifically an Einstein–Rosen bridge) device (the Stargate) that enables nearly instantaneous travel across the cosmos.

[4] The predominant story arc thus ran for more than 15 years, including 18 seasons (364 episodes) of programming, and 22 comic book issues as of January 2020.

The film sees a team led by Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell) and including Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) venture through the Stargate to the planet of Abydos, finding a society of ancient Egyptian-speaking humans ruled by a space-faring alien posing in the role of the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra.

The expedition eventually liberates the society from the control of the alien, killing it in the process, before the survivors (bar Daniel, who had ingrained himself with the locals) return to Earth.

In 1997, Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright co-developed Stargate SG-1, a television series intended to continue the story laid down by the original film.

The show for the first eight seasons initially focused on efforts by Stargate Command to combat the Goa'uld, the race of beings to whom the alien calling itself Ra had belonged to, and their leaders known as the System Lords while liberating both the human populations they had enslaved throughout the galaxy as well as their enslaved armies of mutated humans known as the Jaffa.

[27] It starred Richard Dean Anderson (as O'Neill) and Michael Shanks (as Jackson), alongside Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and Don S. Davis respectively playing the new characters Samantha Carter, Teal'c and George Hammond.

[29] SG-1 was taken off air in 2007; however, two direct-to-DVD movies entitled The Ark of Truth and Stargate Continuum were made to tie up loose ends.

Some scenes for this movie were already shot at the end of March 2007, but the original start date was set for May 22 at Vancouver's Bridge Studios.

Stargate: Children of the Gods is a direct-to-DVD movie written by Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright and directed by Mario Azzopardi.

A few months before its release, executive producer Brad Wright announced it would be enhanced with brand new visual effects and scenes not previously included in the television version.

Atlantis debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel on July 16, 2004, starring Joe Flanigan and Torri Higginson in the lead roles, with Rainbow Sun Francks, David Hewlett, and Rachel Luttrell alongside.

Tapping left the show for Season 5 to concentrate on Sanctuary, and was replaced by Robert Picardo, who reprised his role as Richard Woolsey from both SG-1 and Atlantis.

In July 2017, a web series called Stargate Origins was announced at a San Diego Comic-Con Panel celebrating the franchise's 20th anniversary.

[5][36][37] The cast includes Ellie Gall as the young Catherine Langford,[38] Connor Trinneer as Catherine's father, Professor Paul Langford,[39] Aylam Orian as Dr. Wilhelm Brücke, a high-ranking Nazi officer,[40][39] Philip Alexander as Captain James Beal, British officer stationed in Egypt,[41] and Shvan Aladdin as Wasif, a native Egyptian and a lieutenant in the British army.

[51] In the intervening time, copyright-holder MGM succeeded the film with the television series Stargate SG-1 without the input of Emmerich and Devlin.

[52] More recently, it received acclaim for its visual effects, which increased in quality and realism as the show gained a larger budget.

[53] On August 21, 2006, the Sci Fi Channel announced that it would not be renewing Stargate SG-1 for an eleventh season after a series of poor performances in the Nielsen ratings.

The Stargate franchise in 2009 won a Constellation Award in the category of Outstanding Canadian Contribution to Science Fiction Film or Television in 2008.

According to Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis co-creator Brad Wright, the show is popular in Great Britain, Germany, France and Australia, but with a steadily declining viewership in homeland Canada.

[69] In February 2008, it was announced that Big Finish Productions would release officially licensed audiobooks featuring members of the cast reading new stories.

[70] After Bill McCay had written a series of five novels continuing the story the original creators had envisioned, and despite the success of the Stargate television series, in 2006, Dean Devlin said: "He has struck a production deal with MGM and is developing the long-delayed sequel feature films that will pick up the story from the 1994 original.

His hope was, as the series started to wind down, that perhaps it would be time to actually get to do parts two and three: I think it'll change a little bit from our original idea since so many years have passed.

[75] The following year, SG-1 stars Amanda Tapping and Richard Dean Anderson further confirmed that they'd spoken to Wright and expressed their own interest in returning to the franchise in some capacity.

[76] In January 2019, Wright elaborated that his conversations with MGM pertained to continuing the television franchise in a way that fully acknowledged the "several hundred hours of show that's already out there" and not simply honouring it.

[77][78][79] In July 2020, SG-1, Atlantis and Universe writer-producer Joseph Mallozzi teased Wright's project, commenting that "we've never been closer to a fourth Stargate series."

[80][81] On November 21, 2020, Brad Wright confirmed that he was developing a television series of Stargate with MGM and that it would be a continuation, not a reboot.

[82][83] In a series of podcasts in March and May 2021, Wright continued to offer small updates on the project, including that his script features the SG-1 characters of Daniel Jackson, Cameron Mitchell, Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill, with the hope that Michael Shanks, Ben Browder and Amanda Tapping all return in some capacity to their respective roles.

Around that time, writer and producer on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe Joseph Mallozzi teased Wright's pilot script for the new project on social media.