‘Stargate Atlantis’ Run Ends On Season 5
2-Hour TV-Movie Greenlit For 2009 As Stargate Franchise Lives On In Features
By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 8/20/2008 7:59:00 PM
Space drama Stargate Atlantis will conclude its run on Sci Fi Channel after the current season ends in January -- but the network has greenlit a two-hour Atlantis movie that will allow the series to live on as a network franchise.
After airing on Sci Fi sometime next year, the untitled Atlantis movie will be sold as a home-video title by producer MGM, Sci Fi told Multichannel News on Wednesday.
MGM this year released two financially successful straight-to-DVD movies that were made after progenitor series Stargate SG-1 ended a 10-year run of first-run cable episodes on Sci Fi. MGM and the show producers are scheduled to make more in DVDs in the future, suggesting a movie franchise is also envisioned for Stargate Atlantis.
Longtime Stargate writers and producers (and Atlantis show runners) Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie will write the Atlantis feature script. Other details, such as how many cast members will participate or who will direct the film, were not immediately available.
"We're excited to tell Atlantis stories on a bigger canvas,” Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, co-creators of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis and executive producers on Atlantis, said in a statement. “The successes of the two original Stargate [direct-to-video] movies, The Ark of Truth and Continuum, have shown us the opportunities that the movie format offers. We have plans for both SG-1 and Atlantis to remain vital as we expand the franchise."
“We share in the producers’ enthusiasm to move forward in this direction and we look forward to a strong and continued relationship on Stargate Atlantis in this new format,” Thomas Vitale, Sci Fi Channel senior VP of Programming & Original Movies, also said in the statement.
Wright and Cooper are developing a third TV series in the franchise -- called Stargate Universe – and pitched it to Sci Fi Channel in late 2007, Wright told Gateworld.net in April. Sci Fi said nothing about that potential addition in its statement about Atlantis. Sci Fi has aired had new Stargate series in first run since 2002.
Stargate SG-1 ran for 10 seasons, split between first runs on Showtime and on Sci Fi. Stargate Atlantis is a spinoff, launched in 2004. It will hit air its 100th episode this season. Its stars include Rachel Luttrell (as Teyla, pictured above, assisting character Radek Zelenka, played by David Nykl), Joe Flanigan, David Hewlett, Jewel Staite and Robert Picardo.
The series follows the adventures of an intrepid team of military and civilian explorers who travel the distant Pegasus galaxy by means of a Stargate, a portal created long ago by a highly advanced alien civilization called the Ancients. In their never-ending quest to seek out other technologies left behind by the Ancients, the Atlantis team encounters alien cultures – some friend, some foe.
Atlantis reruns already air in broadcast syndication as well as on Sci Fi, which still shows SG-1 reruns too. The current Atlantis season is five episodes into a 20-episode run.
Airing at 10 p.m. Fridays, Atlantis has averaged a little over 2 million viewers per show in a blend of ratings that includes live plus seven-day figures for some episodes, per ABC TV Group research. The average viewer number is well ahead of the first 10 episodes of season four (when it averaged about 1.75 million) and roughly in line with the last 10 episodes of that season.
The series premiere, on July 16, 2004, drew 4.19 million viewers, and the first 10 episodes averaged more than 3 million viewers each, according to the ABC TV Group analysis.
Its viewership declined in each subsequent 10-episode block until the second half of last season, when it rebounded to average more than 2.1 million viewers per show.
Remarkably, the first few episodes of the current season have seen Atlantis’s audience of viewers 18-49 double when seven days of recorded viewing are added in, according to a new Turner Research analysis of Nielsen Media Research data.
Show runner Mallozzi previously noted in his blog that the odds get stacked against a series after five years -- and that the rising Canadian dollar compared to the value of the U.S. dollar has made this and other Vancouver-produced series more expensive to make.
“Both MGM and Sci Fi have been great supporters of the show and, if you go by SG-1’s example, fans can be assured that the end of the series will not be the end of Atlantis,” Mallozzi wrote in a June 29 blog post. “Like SG-1, it will live on in longer-form DVD releases.”
Ark of Truth and Continuum both exceeded MGM’s expectations for home-video sales, Mallozzi said. Continuum, the most recent release, ranked ninth on Video Business magazine’s list of top-selling DVDs for the week ended Aug. 9.
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Stargate SG1 and Atlantis are my favourite shows, i have bought all the seasons on dvd and all the movies that have been released on dvd to date. How can they cancel such a good show. they should continue to make another stargate atlantis season and the viewers will continue to go up. why do they stop making good tv showws just as they start getting better with greater storylines then they were before, and they were good before. If they made more i would personally buy them as soon as they were released on dvds here in australia.
Jeremy Campbell - 4/27/2009 12:54:13 AM EDT -
i go along with the others in that these shows are the best. Reality crap, no thanks. Ghost hunters, do people really watch that BS? Starting to lose interest in the sci fi channel. Looked forward to watching the stargate series (both of them) are friday night. Back to watching the NBA I guess, what else is there.
Rick Lawrence - 2/4/2009 10:34:02 PM EST -
No show lasts forever. Look at Star Trek. (Wait a minute, they came back and ran another 25 seasons worth in addition to the original three.) Okay, Look at CSI. (Uh wait a minute, all three CSI productions are still running) Okay, Look at the Law & Order universe (Opps, three of the four are still going) Smallville, (Uh seven + seasons)
So, when a network cancels its best show, an award winning popular show, what does it say? It says to me that they just want to fill airtime with something cheap. They obviously aren't interested in what the people want to see. The Stargate world is something people watch, and so they take it off the air. I don't want to continue to watch shows on a network that has a history of cancelling as soon as it gets interesting. I watch those other shows (except Star Trek) each week, because they are good, and because I feel they'll be back next week. And I would still be watching Star Trek each week if it were still on.
So, SciFi, find another way; get rid of the wrestling and reality shows and become what you're suppposed to be. SciFi before you SciDie.
R Joyce - 1/25/2009 7:00:38 PM EST -
ok i am not sure if i understod this.
did they say that Startgate atlatis is going to continue but not as a TV show? but as a movies series? o.O"
pat Clark - 1/12/2009 10:26:00 PM EST -
I cannot believe the anology for cancelling the SGA. The viewing audience declined the same season that the SciFi "brain trust" moved it to 10PM behind that soap opera in space Battlestar Galactica. Did it ever occur to anyone at SciFi that SGA was the far superior show and had the loyal fan base?? As soon as SGA is moved back to the 9PM slot the viewing numbers go back up.....DUH???
I also find it interesting how it was not advertised that this was SGA's last season. But yet every other commercial promotes the final season of Battlestar Galactica. I had no idea until last night that was the 100th and final episode...thanks alot SciFi.
I too will be cancelling my SciFi cable because there is nothing worth watching on that channel.
P. Coleman - 1/10/2009 6:51:00 PM EST
