It has been some six years since fans of MGM’s “Stargate” franchise last saw a TV series installment of the highly-acclaimed “military sci-fi” franchise. Fortunately, that is about to change as a new series entitled “Stargate: Origins” is set to premiere in the late fall of 2017. Announced earlier this year at the San Diego Comic Con to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Stargate” on television, “Origins” is set to be the centerpiece of “Stargate Command,” MGM’s very own exclusive digital streaming platform. In addition, the producers have revealed their casting for the lead character and released a production teaser.
Production teaser
MGM made the new big announcement on “Stargate: Origins” over the weekend at, fittingly, another convention: Stan Lee’s Los Angeles Comic Con. Here the studio panel stated that actress Ellie Gall has been cast in the role of Catherine Langford, the main character of the digital TV series that is set as a prequel to the rest of the TV franchise and most of the original 1994 movie. The Langford character is portrayed as a child in 1928 during the prologue of the film, and as an elderly researcher for the rest of the live-action installments will be portrayed this time as a young woman of adventure.
“Origins” also put out a behind-the-scenes teaser of the MGM Digital production, which began in August.
The video depicts a soundstage where the shooting was being done in a tent city, although the location being depicted is in question. While the titular Stargate was found in early 20th Century Egypt, the alien civilization it connects to is also Middle Eastern in aesthetics. The series director, Mercedes Bryce Morgan, talks about the details of production in the teaser.
“We had stunts and we had blood and we had emotional moments, and I feel like we really hit all those,” she says, describing the first week of shooting the series.
More production details
In previous information shared by MGM Digital in July, “Stargate: Origins” tells the untold adventures of a still young Catherine Langford (Australian Ellie Gall) in the decades before the formation of Stargate Command in America.
Having been made aware of an “unimaginable darkness” threatening to engulf Earth, she embarks on a personal quest to uncover the truth behind the excavated Stargate and what lies beyond it.
Additional cast members of “Origins” include Philip Alexander, Salome Azizi, Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez, Daniel Rashid, Sarah Navratil and Derek Chariton, among many others. The series, written by Mark Ilvedson and Justin Michael Terry, and directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan, will be the first original show of the MGM streaming platform Stargate Command. This upcoming service follows a resurgent trend of media providers setting up their own streaming platforms, similar to Disney which plans to pull its content from Netflix by 2019.
