Amazon's Done This Before: Brad Wright's Own Cancelled Stargate Pitch Predates Gero's by Five Years
Turns out Martin Gero wasn't the first Stargate veteran to get a pitch killed by this exact studio. Co-creator Brad Wright revealed this week that he had his own post-Continuum series rejected right before the pandemic — and the story of how it died sounds uncomfortably familiar.
Here's a detail that reframes the whole Gero saga: this isn't the first time someone who actually built this franchise brought Amazon (via MGM) a pitch for more Stargate, only to watch it get shelved. Brad Wright — the guy who co-created SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe — said this week that he had his own version killed years before Martin Gero ever got a writers room.
The Pitch Nobody Talks About
Per Wright's own account, MGM came to him right after he wrapped Travelers, asking for exactly the kind of continuation fans have been begging for — a fourth live-action series. He delivered: a pilot script with new characters working alongside legacy cast, up against a brand-new antagonist (not the Goa'uld, not the Wraith, not the Ori — something the show hadn't done before), set years after the events of Stargate: Continuum, which had planted the seeds for exactly this kind of follow-up.
MGM, in Wright's telling, was into it. Amazon wasn't. His own summary of the outcome is refreshingly blunt: "I can only presume Amazon didn't like it." No lengthy corporate explanation, no "broad appeal beyond the dedicated fanbase" line — just presumed disinterest from a studio that, by his account, never gave him much more than that. The timing is the real gut punch: this all happened right before the pandemic, which Wright says reshaped Hollywood into something considerably more risk-averse than the industry that first optioned his pitch.
Two Pitches, Same Studio, Same Instinct
Set this next to what we already know about Gero's version, and the pattern gets uncomfortable. Gero's Stargate got a full 20-week writers room, cast members lined up, a London soundstage booked — and Amazon still pulled the plug in June, worried it wouldn't reach "broad appeal beyond the dedicated fanbase." Wright's pitch never got that far, but the instinct behind both rejections reads the same: a studio that owns one of the most durable sci-fi properties in television history keeps flinching at the idea of actually making more of it.
Wright himself draws the comparison, and he's generous about it — he calls Gero's cancellation "even more heartbreaking" precisely because that team got so much closer to actually filming something before the axe fell. That's not a small thing to say about a competing pitch for the same franchise. It reads like someone who genuinely wants to see this thing get made by anyone, not just protective of his own shelved script.
Worth Noting, Given the Timing
I wrote earlier this week about Amazon quietly interviewing writers for yet another crack at Stargate — this time deliberately seeking someone with zero prior connection to the franchise, the theory being that outside eyes might land the "broad appeal" Amazon keeps chasing. Set against Wright's revelation, that strategy reads a little differently. The studio has now passed on a script from a writer who helped invent this universe (Wright) and a script from a writer who spent years working inside it as a staff writer on two of the three shows (Gero). If neither insider pitch cleared the bar, "find someone who's never touched Stargate" isn't just a fresh-eyes strategy — it might be the only card Amazon hasn't tried yet.
Why This Still Isn't a Eulogy
I want to be careful not to read Wright's story as confirmation that this franchise is cursed at the studio level, because that's too tidy. Different eras, different executives, different specific pitches — Wright's was a full new-enemy premise building off Continuum, Gero's was built around Daniel Jackson bridging our reality into a parallel one. They're not the same show wearing two names. What they share is a common obstacle, and now we know it's been standing in the way since at least 2020, not just since June.
Chevron's still not locked, and it's had more false starts than even I usually track in these updates. But there's something almost reassuring about learning the delay predates this year's drama — it means the franchise's own creative talent has never actually run out of ideas for where to take it next. The problem has never been a shortage of good Stargate. It's been getting anyone at Amazon to say yes to it.
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