The #SaveStargate petition has blown past 120,000 signatures, and it happened with the campaign standing in the middle of one of the biggest fan gatherings on the planet.
The milestone landed over Dragon Con weekend in Atlanta, where campaign volunteers spent September 3-7 working the crowds, per an announcement sent out by the campaign.
Amazon MGM Studios, three months into the loudest fan revolt of the year, still hasn’t said a word.
Shanks Crashes The Cosplay
Michael Shanks was right there with them.
Video from the convention shows the SG-1 star surprising a group of Stargate cosplayers, and the clip is making the rounds with the #SaveStargate hashtag attached.
It caps a busy stretch for Daniel Jackson.
One weekend earlier at Ascension 2 in the UK, Shanks confirmed he was set to reprise the role in Martin Gero’s canceled series, and fired off his “Really?? Do they?” shot at Amazon over its Doctor Who comments.
120,000 And Counting
“There are millions of Stargate fans across the world; the shows are consistently trending on Amazon Prime, despite no new episodes airing for fifteen years,” said campaign organizer James Kerfoot in the announcement.
Kerfoot is the organizer whose GoFundMe for the studio flyover drew more than 500 donations and raised nearly $20,000.
“It shouldn’t have been surprising that fans clamored for the opportunity to come together in celebration of this franchise,” Kerfoot continued. “Three months in, we are going strong with in-person events, social media campaigns, and a growing YouTube presence with new content every week.”
Three Months Of Escalation
The campaign formed within days of Amazon MGM scrapping Gero’s series on June 2, roughly 20 weeks into preproduction.
Fans first gathered outside the studio’s Culver City lot as a banner plane flew overhead.
Since then it’s been a Times Square billboard, a London Eye rally, and convention pushes at San Diego Comic-Con, Shore Leave, Ascension Con in the UK, and now Dragon Con.
Franchise stars keep lining up behind it, too, including Shanks, Robert Patrick, Rachel Luttrell, David Hewlett, and Joe Flanigan.
‘The Movement We’ve Started Is Just The Beginning’
Kerfoot laid out exactly what the campaign wants from the studio.
“Our goal is for the studio to prioritize showrunners who love the franchise as much as the fans do, and who honor the legacy of what has come before,” he said.
“We hope they will embrace fandom as an asset to the franchise,” Kerfoot added. “That winning combination launched Stargate to a global phenomenon before, and we know it can happen again.”
The franchise the fans are fighting for spans three films and three series — SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe — with 17 combined seasons between 1997 and 2011.
“But regardless of what AmazonMGM does in this moment, we’re not going anywhere,” Kerfoot said. “The movement we’ve started is just the beginning for the fans.”
