Jac Schaeffer Takes Stargate After Amazon Shelved Gero’s Series

Jac Schaeffer is developing a new Stargate series for Amazon MGM Studios, and a writers room has already opened in New York. Amazon and Schaeffer declined to comment.

The project sits under the three-year overall deal she signed on February 11, 2026. It is also Amazon’s second attempt at the same franchise in less than a year. Martin Gero, a writer on Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe, received a Prime Video series order in November 2025. Amazon pulled that show on June 2, 2026, after a 20-week writers room and the start of pre-production in the United Kingdom.

A Marvel Name Takes Over Stargate

Schaeffer created WandaVision for Marvel Studios and Disney+, then created its spinoff Agatha All Along. She will executive produce the new Stargate with Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse Pictures, the same producing pair attached to Gero’s cancelled series.

That is the part of the announcement that is easy to miss. Amazon did not bring in a whole new shop. It kept the production company and changed the person holding the pen. Gero had been signed to an overall deal specifically to spearhead Stargate. He remains under that deal and is expected to develop other projects. He is simply no longer the person making Stargate.

Schaeffer’s brief is still a blank page. There is no plot, no cast list, no word on whether the 1994 film or the later television canon still counts, and no series order. Gero had already cleared that last hurdle. She has not.

Amazon Already Killed a Greenlit Series

Gero spent two years building the revival that Amazon then dropped. Joseph Mallozzi and Brad Wright, longtime creative leaders on the original television shows, were consulting producers. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, who launched the franchise with the 1994 film starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, were executive producers alongside Safehouse. The room finished its 20 weeks. Crews were preparing to shoot in the United Kingdom. Then the studio walked away rather than give Gero notes.

Creator Martin Gero developed a new Stargate series over two years, ultimately crafting a show that offered a fresh jumping-on point for new viewers while deeply respecting existing canon. 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, humour, and found family.

Joseph Mallozzi, consulting producer on the cancelled series

Mallozzi confirmed the kill on June 2, 2026, and said that original vision was gone. Wright said Gero’s team was doing amazing work and that he wished the world had gotten to see it. Richard Dean Anderson, who played Jack O’Neill on SG-1, later told a Rose City Comic Con reunion panel that the cancelled series was not a reboot. He said Michael Shanks’s Daniel Jackson would have been a conduit from the old universe to the next generation of the story.

Studio executives had been concerned the take would not draw viewers beyond the existing fanbase. Mallozzi pushed back hard on that claim, saying the room had been mindful of broad appeal from the start. Amazon still pulled the show. The people who had championed it inside the company were already gone. Nick Pepper, formerly head of U.S. SVOD development, left when Brett Fetter joined as head of worldbuilding and genre series in February. Matt King, formerly head of tentpole and genre development, left two months later when Fetter restructured the team. Peter Friedlander, Amazon MGM’s head of television, had greenlit Gero’s series as one of his first pickups after joining in early October 2025.

THE STARGATE CLOCK

1. May 26, 2021: Amazon agrees to buy MGM for $8.45 billion and names Stargate in the film catalog.
2. March 17, 2022: The MGM deal closes and the studio joins Prime Video and Amazon Studios.
3. November 2025: Prime Video gives Martin Gero a series order.
4. February 11, 2026: Jac Schaeffer signs a three-year overall television deal with Amazon MGM Studios.
5. June 2, 2026: Amazon elects not to move forward with Gero’s series after the 20-week room and U.K. pre-production.
6. October 9, 2026: Schaeffer is developing a new Stargate series; a writers room has opened in New York.

Fifteen years had already passed since Stargate Universe ended in 2011. Amazon spent another four months after the June kill before putting a different writer in the chair.

Who Stays on the Call Sheet

Read the two versions side by side and the winners are obvious. Safehouse Pictures is still there. Schaeffer is in. The people who wrote hundreds of hours of Stargate television are not named on the new project.

THE TWO STARGATE ROOMS

Gero had written for three live-action Stargate shows and later created NBC’s Blindspot. Wright helped build the television universe that ran from SG-1’s 10 seasons, from 1997 to 2007, through Atlantis, five seasons from 2004 to 2009, and Universe, from 2009 to 2011. Mallozzi came up through the same rooms. None of that history is listed on Schaeffer’s version.

Harold’s producing credits include Obi-Wan Kenobi. Tunnell’s include Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. They are the only above-the-line names that appear on both call sheets. Amazon gets to say the franchise is still in development. The original writers get to watch from outside the gate.

124,759 Fans Asked for the Other Show

Michael Shanks did not wait for a replacement announcement. After the June kill he told viewers that if they wanted a Stargate show with any of the original creators or performers involved, that was the time to say something, or that chapter would be over. A fan campaign followed, with YouTubers Shane and Brian Montgomery, the Popcast Brothers, pushing the main petition.

WHAT THE CAMPAIGN DID

• The petition: Save Stargate with Martin Gero now carries 124,759 verified signatures on Change.org, addressed to Jeff Bezos.
• The flyover: On June 16, 2026, the campaign staged an aircraft flyover of Amazon MGM Studios in Culver City and a global posting storm under #SaveStargate.
• The billboards: On June 27, 2026, the same group rented digital boards in Times Square to argue that Gero’s series still had an audience.
• The cast line: Shanks asked fans to make themselves visible to the studio; Mallozzi and Wright put their names on the record the day the show died.

The louder problem now is the empty chair. Amazon is asking that same audience to trust a writer with no Stargate credits, four months after it discarded a finished room that had the original family in it. Some of the organized campaign has told people to stay calm and wait for facts. The sharper objection is simpler. The studio kept Safehouse, changed the showrunner, and has not said whether Wright, Mallozzi, or Gero will be invited back in any role.

That is not a taste argument about WandaVision. It is a staffing argument. The people who knew how a Stargate episode is supposed to move, joke, and land were already on payroll, and Amazon still started over.

The Studio Wanted a Fresh Perspective

Amazon has wanted a new Stargate since it bought MGM. The May 26, 2021 merger agreement priced the studio at $8.45 billion and listed Stargate among MGM’s film titles beside James Bond, Rocky, RoboCop, and Legally Blonde. When the deal closed on March 17, 2022, Amazon said MGM brought more than 4,000 film titles, 17,000 TV episodes, 180 Academy Awards, and 100 Emmy Awards into Prime Video and Amazon Studios. Stargate was among the first MGM titles flagged for new film or series work.

By June, people inside the company were already talking about revisiting the IP with a showrunner who did not have history with it. Schaeffer fits that job description exactly. She has never written Stargate. She has written Marvel television that a huge streaming audience actually finished. Amazon’s bet is that a writer who can carry newcomers will recoup an IP that, in the studio’s view, Gero’s version would have played to the people who already loved it.

The tension in that bet is sitting in plain sight. WandaVision was a nine-episode sitcom pastiche built on Wanda Maximoff’s grief, and it rewarded viewers who already knew the Marvel films. Agatha All Along went deeper into the same corner of that universe. Amazon just discarded a Stargate continuation for being too tied to its own audience, then hired the writer whose hits live inside another franchise’s continuity. The studio can still argue she has pulled casual viewers into dense genre stories before. It cannot argue she is a blank-slate outsider in the way the June conversations implied.

Schaeffer’s Brief Still Has No Plot

Under the February deal, Schaeffer will develop, write, executive produce, and direct original series for Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. She had been under an overall deal at Marvel Studios and 20th Television. WandaVision, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe series on Disney+, earned 23 Primetime Emmy nominations and three Emmys. Agatha All Along earned three Emmy nominations. She also contributed to the story of Black Widow, wrote The Hustle, wrote Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, directed the pilot of a Holes series for Disney+, and in 2009 wrote, directed, and produced the sci-fi romcom TiMER.

That last credit is the closest thing on her shelf to Stargate’s hardware. The franchise she is inheriting is a military science-fiction adventure about an ancient ring that opens a wormhole to other planets. SG-1 sent teams through that ring for 10 seasons. Atlantis and Universe extended the map. An animated series, Stargate Infinity, ran from 2002 to 2003. The web series Stargate Origins arrived in 2018. None of Schaeffer’s published Stargate pages have been described. Amazon has not said whether her show continues that map or throws it out.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The deal: Schaeffer is developing Stargate under her three-year Amazon MGM overall deal, with Safehouse Pictures as executive producers.
• The room: A writers room has opened in New York, moving the work from Gero’s U.K. pre-production base back to the United States.
• The silence: Amazon and Schaeffer declined to comment, and no series order has been announced.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The story: No plot, setting, or time period has been released, including whether the 1994 film or the television canon still applies.
• The old room: There is no public word on whether Gero, Wright, Mallozzi, Devlin, or Emmerich will return in any capacity.
• The format: Claims that the show might be a miniseries or a hybrid continuation remain unverified.

Until those answers exist, Schaeffer’s Stargate is a staffing change with a famous name on it. It is not yet a show.

The New Show Still Has to Get Made

Amazon now has what the June post-mortems said it wanted: a prestige writer with no Stargate history, a room in New York, and the same producing company that was already on the lot. Gero still has a deal at the same studio. Wright and Mallozzi are not on the new sheet. The petition is still up. The gate, for the moment, is a development file.

A series order would change that. Until one arrives, Amazon has replaced a greenlit Stargate with a second attempt that has not cleared the bar the first one already passed.