Richard Dean Anderson as Colonel Jack O’Neill
The fans of some of MGM’s biggest franchises will have to wait for new stories set in their favorite universes — but Amazon MGM Studios chief Jennifer Salke believes they will be patient while the studio works to get those projects right.
Salke is the the global head of Amazon MGM Studios, who spoke on James Bond and other current film and TV franchises in a new conversation with The Guardian.
“There are a lot of ideas [about potential Bond actors] that have popped up that I thought are interesting,” Salke said. “I think there are a lot of different ways we can go. We have a good and close relationship with Eon [Productions]” and Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who exercise creative control over the Bond franchise — including who will be cast to play the character. Daniel Craig’s final Bond film, No Time to Die, released in 2021.
“We are not looking to disrupt the way those wonderful films are made,” Salke said. “For us, we are taking their lead. The global audience will be patient. We don’t want too much time between films, but we are not concerned at this point.”
Stargate SG-1 (“Cure”)
The same judgment probably holds for Stargate, although unlike Bond the sci-fi franchise has been out of production for nearly 14 years (not counting 2018’s low-budget Web series). Once upon a time Stargate was regarded as MGM’s most valuable television property (and second overall only to Bond). MGM acquired the rights to Stargate in the lead-up to the theatrical release of the 1994 movie, which it distributed to theaters. MGM Television followed up with ten seasons of Stargate SG-1, five seasons of Stargate Atlantis, and two seasons of Stargate Universe — accumulating a total of 17 seasons and more than 350 episodes between 1997 and 2011.
SGU aired its final episode in 2011, and since then the Stargate franchise’s global fan base has been waiting — and at times campaigning loudly — for a revival.
THE LONG GAME
Salke explained how the studio is playing the long game with James Bond, taking the time to consider how today’s decisions will have long-term impacts on the brand. Without her (or anyone else from Amazon MGM) going on the record about Stargate since the acquisition of MGM closed in 2022, Salke’s words seem just as applicable to Stargate. With careful development time, Stargate could end up becoming Amazon’s biggest science fiction franchise.
Salke said: “When you are looking at iconic intellectual property like [James Bond], you look at what the entire long-term future might be. Of course you look at every facet.”
Stargate Atlantis (“Enemy at the Gate”)
She added that Amazon’s $8.45 billion acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2022 was “definitely uncharted waters for me.” Today Salke leads that team that is continuing MGM franchises that were already in production at the time — including The Handmaid’s Tale for Hulu, Vikings: Valhalla for The History Channel, Fargo for FX, and Wednesday for Netflix — as well as redeploying beloved IP in new ways. Robocop was just greenlit for a new television series, along with a new Poltergeist series and a prequel show for Reese Witherspoon’s now classic Legally Blonde comedy films.
Stargate, meanwhile, is still nowhere to be seen.
A future revamp of Stargate could take the franchise in a number of different directions — including rebooting the story from scratch, or continuing the existing mythology that millions of fans around the world have invested in. It might be set in the present day, or leap ahead to the near future. And Stargate certainly could span multiple streaming series, movies, new licensed tie-ins like novels, comics, and video games, and more. (While a bit more active in recent years, Stargate’s licensing ventures have remained a humble affair since 2011.)
The studio needs to get Stargate right — not only for the long-term health of the franchise, but also to boost its own streaming platforms in the genre of science fiction.
LORD OF THE STREAMS
Amazon has lacked a stand-out sci-fi series on Prime Video since The Expanse concluded in 2022. Its sister streamer, MGM+, recently cancelled the lackluster Beacon 23 after two seasons. Post-apocalyptic video game adaptation Fallout had an excellent launch on Prime Video in 2024 — though of course that’s very different than the sort of interstellar storytelling that a Stargate could deliver to fans of traditional science fiction.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon MGM Studios)
On the fantasy side The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power recently concluded its second season, the result of a pricey deal with the Tolkien estate that Amazon reached prior to its acquisition of MGM. (MGM, for its part, did co-finance Peter Jackson’s three Hobbit films.) The world of Middle-earth is not an MGM property, but many Stargate fans have scrutinized that streaming series as a portent of what Amazon MGM Studios could do with science fiction — for good or for ill.
The Rings of Power has been a costly endeavor that looks great on screen (though perhaps not rising to New Line Cinema’s achievement with the film trilogy), but criticized by many viewers and long-time Tolkien fans. The show has had an impressive global reach, however: while Amazon does not publish firm viewing numbers week-to-week, it has boasted that more than 100 million people have at least checked out the first season since its 2022 debut. Season Two reached 55 million global viewers in its first 34 days, according to Amazon.
Amazon has been targeting 50 episodes (around six seasons) for The Rings of Power, in part to amortize its initial big spend to acquire the rights and build out the Middle-earth sets. The studio recently acquired Bray Film Studios outside London as a way to extend its U.K. production footprint there, and moved the production of The Rings of Power (which has a heavy U.K. cast) up from New Zealand. The facility has more than 53,000 square feet of sound stage space.
Stargate Universe (“Water”)
Stargate fans have also expressed worry that MGM’s new owners would be heavy-handed in interfering creatively with a new Stargate series. Salke, for her part, suggests that this isn’t how she likes to work with the studio’s partners. “We work as close collaborators,” she said. “I’m not meddlesome, I’m not here to babysit.”
Salke spoke of The Lord of the Rings in similar terms as requiring a long-term strategy, telling Variety, “If you look at the long-term trajectory, which is how this company looks at an asset like that, this is a long-term investment in that franchise. … We’ll continue to make the show as long as we see global customers loving it and watching it to the point where — it is a business. Obviously, we need a large amount of people showing up. And there are a large amount of people, so there’s no debate about whether or not the show will continue.”
Now if we could just get some of that investment and attention on Stargate. Fourteen years is patience enough.
From 2022: Amazon Wants To Go Big With Stargate