BitMoreDave 🎮

There is more to the story behind the reason why the Stargate show on Amazon was cancelled. The original greenlighters at Amazon, Nick Pepper and Matt King, who liked Martin Gero's work that respected the Stargate lore, have been moved, let go, or restructured under a new Amazon MGM studio leadership. Under the new leadership with Peter Friedlander, who is an ex-Netflix head of U.S. and Canada scripted division, and Blair Fetter, a Netflix vet who ran “spectacle series”, they shifted focus towards maximum broad and global appeal for expensive worldbuilding shows. They want more shows like Stranger Things, 3 Body Problem, Ozark, etc, which were massive hits, and any new shows must have broad appeal, where they must convincingly bring in new viewers, not just satisfy existing fans. There is an age-old saying... A product made for everyone is made for no one. These execs don't understand that their success came during a time of a massive global crisis, and pretty much any decent show gets massive ratings due to the forcibly captive audience. COVID really gassed up a lot of execs into thinking they are geniuses when the reality is that these numbers were never going to be repeated again. What this will likely do is cause Amazon to burn massive amounts of funds for "modern audience-wide appeal" flops that interest no one and offend no one. And yet, even under this new regime, it is still greenlighting more of Rings of Power despite its underperformance. The chase for "inoffensive broad appeal" is going to bite them in the butt. The sad part is... a lore-accurate Stargate show was in the works, but because it didn't have enough modern audience broad appeal, they axed it under the new leadership. Joe Mallozzi, a long-time SG1 showrunner said, "It was a series that avoided the pitfalls of several modern remakes and reboots by fully embracing the core of its predecessors: action, adventure, exploration, wonder, heart, humor, and found family.” By all accounts, it sounded like it would have been a good show, but we'll never see it... not at least from the "new" Amazon.