 
GW: Are any of the actors coming back to do any of these little tweaks?
BW: They may have to do some ADR, I'm hoping. We could do it without them. I could have it delivered in a couple of months, but Fox and MGM will decide when it gets released. Probably closer to Christmas. Makes sense.
GW: Probably this year?
BW: Oh yeah. It can be this year. It will be ready for this year. And it may well be aired for the very first time on MGM's HD, or even on SCI FI's HD. For people who have seen the original "Children of the Gods" enough times you will notice the difference and I think you'll like it better. For somebody who has never seen it before, if they saw the two, I think they would think the new one is the better movie.
GW: Cool.
BW: I hope so! I know so. It's better. I've got a lot of experience now, cutting for 16:9 alone changes everything.
Concept art for a ballistic archaeologist from the upcoming MMO Stargate Worlds. | |
And the other cool thing coming down is something that David's very much involved with, and that's Stargate Worlds. I'm so excited about that. I think it's very cool. It's right around the corner.
GW: You're excited with what you've seen so far?
BW: Yeah! It's very cool.
GW: How does this game, as storytelling in a very different medium, fit into the Stargate canon in your world? In your mind?
BW: It definitely breaks new ground, but it breaks new ground in a way that is different because it has to be a different kind of storytelling. It's just not "Here's the story, here's another story, here's another story," which is what I'm used to doing.
It's a different way of playing in the Stargate universe, and I know just from the artwork and from everything I've read that while there are elements of it that are newly created for the game, that they are very respectful, incredibly respectful, for the existing canon and the elements of Stargate, like the free Jaffa.
They've broken it down in terms of characters that you can play, and of course that's what they had to do. The overriding arc of their story isn't something that we could've done as a single episode, or even as a series arc. It's a big honkin' story. Big enough to be a massive multiplayer role[playing] game.
GW: It'd take 40 hours, 50 hours to get through. And that's one shard!
BW: There you go! Exactly, and so you're talking literally seasons of television comparatively. But all essentially one story, which we don't do. It's kind of like letting it go off on its own knowing that the people who are doing it are respectful of the canon and of the franchise itself, because they don't want to alienate fans. They want the fans obviously to join in, but just fans ain't going to make it work.
GW: Stargate fans are eagerly awaiting word from MGM and SCI FI as to what's next. Is it going to be a third movie first? Is it going to be a third series first? Can you give us a status update?
BW: Yes! [Laughter] We know we're doing something. That's all I can tell you right now. I have been a bit frustrated at the time it takes for these things to unfold. Part of the reason it's taking a while is Atlantis is currently ongoing, and also because we didn't want to go into development with anything during the writer's strike because it seemed inappropriate. Even though we're Canadian we recognized it was for the American marketplace and I was respectful. I'm a member of the Writer's Guild of America, so it was wrong on many levels.
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"Universe, if we do it the way we want to do it, is very expensive, and I think we've proven ourselves."
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Having said that, internally Robert and I are a little bit torn, because we had such a good time making The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum. Making one or two of those a year would be a damn fine thing to do, honestly. It takes up a big chunk of time writing it, a big chunk of time making it, and the post on a movie is more than twice as complicated as post on the biggest episodes. It's not like you can just knock one off while you're making a television show. It's just too much.
I also know that Stargate Universe is a good idea for a television show.
GW: Are the crew and the writers not anxious to go back to 40 hours a year and do two shows simultaneously?
BW: I'm not anxious to do that. It was almost out of necessity that we did it last time. The money we had to do Atlantis was barely enough to do it right and the dollar had just skyrocketed. When we said we could do it, it was based on a dollar that was very different.
I hate to get practical here, but every tenth of a dollar, every point, depending on the budget on a movie it's enormous. On a television show you're looking at 60 to 80 thousand dollars. That just comes off the screen. And we like things on the screen. We like to make the biggest show we can and I hate, hate, hate being so -- and I know fans don't like hearing about the nuts and bolts of production to a certain extent -- but when I see big expensive network shows with literally two and three times our budget and I think "Man, what could we do with that?" I know what we did -- we made Continuum for the budget of a regular episode of ...
GW: LOST.
BW: Exactly.
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