MGM has green-lit production on the next SG-1 film, which will star Richard Dean Anderson. Also: Atlantis movie update.

There’s finally progress on the third Stargate SG-1 movie, with news coming out from multiple sources over the last few days that MGM has officially given the film a green light for production. The movie is expected to film in 2009 — probably in the fall, to avoid too much production overlap with Stargate Universe.

“I can almost guarantee we are proceeding with the SG-1 movie this year,” executive producer Brad Wright told GateWorld in an interview last week. He said that deals are still being worked out, but he still plans to make it the same Jack O’Neill-centric film he first teased last year.

He said that the Atlantis film is also still in the works, and MGM has every intention of making it.

“When we start shooting the Stargate SG-1 movie depends on whether we do the two movies back-to-back,” Wright elaborated during his on-stage Q&A with executive producer Robert C. Cooper at the Creation convention Sunday. “The Stargate SG-1 movie will probably start shooting in the fall. I say ‘probably’ because there are a lot of deals that have to be finished being put in place before that can actually happen. That would leave the summer [of 2010] as the release time, roughly around the same as Continuum.”

Stargate: Continuum debuted on DVD and Blu-ray at the end of July, 2008.

The new movie is currently being written by Wright and Carl Binder, and will feature Richard Dean Anderson as O’Neill.

“I had a story idea that really worked with O’Neill,” Wright told the Vancouver crowd. “And it’s not just his character, by any means. It’s a Stargate story that brings O’Neill back in a big way.”

“The movie has been green-lit,” Anderson told his official fan site, RDAnderson.com. “There are so few details beyond the ‘go ahead,’ but I sat next to Charlie Cohen and across from Brad Wright at dinner two weeks ago (the cast dinner for the launch of Stargate Universe), and just an hour prior to sitting down to mediocre cuisine, Charlie had announced MGM’s intention to make the next Stargate movie.”

Producer Joseph Mallozzi reiterated that, although Stargate Universe and the SG-1 movie are moving forward right now, the studio still has every intention of producing the Stargate Atlantis movie. He and writing partner Paul Mullie are writing the script for that project, and hope to have the first draft done by the end of April.

“No firm production dates for either movies,” Mallozzi said, “but if I was a betting man, I’d be looking at this fall.”

NEXT: Stargate Atlantis movie update

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