Sci-Fi Storm

Apparently we were a little overdue for our annual Stargate movie update… 🙂

We’ve heard for years about how Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin intended to make two more Stargate movies after the original, but instead MGM decided to take the franchise to television instead in the form of Stargate SG-1, plus the followups Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. But now a few years removed from the television franchise, Emmerich appears poised to bring the movie franchise back on track – but as opposed to making outright sequels to the original, he wants to start over, given the amount of time that has passed.

In an interview with Digital Spy, he said, “We went to MGM, who has the rights, and proposed to them to do a sequel, but as a reboot… and reboot it as a movie and then do three parts. Pretty soon we’ll have to look for a writer and start.”

As for the original actors returning, “The actors look totally different… it would not work,” he stated. Thus the impetus to start fresh.

Sony has halted pre-production on Roland Emmerich’s SF epic Singularity, which revolves around the term popularized by Ray Kurzweil in his 2005 book [asin=0143037889]The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology[/asin] which is the point at which technology creates a greater intelligence than humans, as explored in numerous movies, TV series and books. In the movie, a nanotech scientist transfers the consciousness of his badly injured son to a nanobot swarm that can take physical form.

Rumors swirled that this was due to Emmerich’s disappointment at having Anonymous suddenly reduced from a wide to a platform release, but both Sony and Emmerich’s people deny that. Instead, it appears that Sony just wants it to be made better before production begins. Ray Kurzweil himself has been brought in to consult on the project, with production start likely delayed but still hopeful of a May 2013 release.

Interestingly, it was a year ago and a day when Emmerich’s The Zone shut down production permanently.

Interesting – Roland Emmerich’s latest project, a low budget sci-fi found-footage flick called The Zone, has been shut down, just a week before filming was to begin. And one factor may have been the Weinstein Company’s announcement Sunday of Apollo 18, which was targeted to open just before The Zone, and is based on the same “found footage” concept that has been popular lately.