News outlets are jumping the gun on what the director is actually saying.

Jaye Davidson plays Ra, the film's lead villain.

Is Stargate headed back to the big screen?

Roland Emmerich, who directed and co-wrote the original 1994 film, is optimistic that the pitch for a rebooted Stargate movie trilogy will go forward. But in a new interview with Digital Spy, he did not say that the studio has officially given the project a green light — contrary to what online news outlets are suggesting today.

We know that Emmerich and co-writer Dean Devlin haven’t given up on their hopes of a big-budget movie trilogy — which was their original plan before MGM acquired the rights to Stargate and turned it into a television franchise in 1997. The two have been talking about it for years, and the cancellation of the television franchise and the turn-over at MGM only breathed new life into the rumors.

The duo — who are also behind movies like Independence Day and 1998’s Godzilla — pitched their plan to MGM last year (story).

“We went to MGM, who has the rights, and we proposed to them to do a sequel — but as a reboot, and reboot it as a movie and then do three parts,” Emmerich told Digital Spy. “And that’s what we’re doing right now. [We’ll] pretty soon have to look for a writer and start.”

Emmerich added that original film stars Kurt Russell and James Spader would not work for their plans to reboot the movies. “The actors look totally different,” he said. “It would not work.”

The proposed trilogy also would not have anything to do with SG-1 and the television continuity.

A source told GateWorld that, while preliminary conversations are taking place between the producers and the studio, the project is not yet in development.

The director’s comments indicate that the next step in the process is to hire a screenwriter. Any official production commitment from the studio would likely require at least a completed script that all parties are happy with.

The strategy of a high-profile, big-budget feature film does seem like the most logical way to reboot the franchise, which struggled in the ratings during its final years on Syfy Channel. Paramount did it successfully with the Star Trek franchise, with four years separating the final season of Enterprise and J.J. Abrams’ 2009 feature.

Stargate Universe went off the air in 2011.

Meanwhile, a pair of sequels to 1996’s mega-hit Independence Day is going forward at FOX, which has announced a release date of July 3, 2015, for the first. Despite earlier reports that actor Will Smith won’t be involved, Emmerich said that moods have changed and talks with Smith are starting soon.

That’s great news for ID4 fans. But if Emmerich is planning to direct those sequels and also the first in a Stargate trilogy, then practically speaking that means the latter is still a few years away from production … and probably would not arrive in theaters before 2018.

Watch the video below, and keep it locked on GateWorld for more news as it breaks!

(Thanks to Ashley for the tip)