The #SaveStargate campaign promised Times Square, and it delivered.
A digital billboard towering over Broadway lit up on June 27 with a rotating set of messages demanding Amazon MGM Studios reverse the cancellation of Martin Gero’s Stargate series, and the fans behind it didn’t just buy ad space, they wrote it in the franchise’s own language.
It’s the campaign’s loudest stunt yet, escalating from a banner plane over the Culver City lot earlier this month to the most-photographed billboard real estate on the planet. And producer Joe Mallozzi has already weighed in.
A Billboard That Speaks Fluent Stargate
The creative is what sells it. Running on a Clear Channel board, the spot cycles through a series of panels aimed squarely at fans who know the canon cold:
- “#SAVESTARGATE — SAVESTARGATE.COM,” over a glowing event-horizon vortex
- “HELP US REOPEN THE IRIS!”
- “THEY’RE TRYING TO CANCEL THE GATE PROGRAM”
- “UNSCHEDULED OFF-WORLD CANCELLATION!”
That last one is the standout. “Unscheduled off-world activation” is the alarm that rang through the SGC every time something came barreling back through the gate in SG-1, swapping in “cancellation” turns a beloved catchphrase into a distress signal.
“Reopen the iris,” likewise, plays on the SGC’s protective shield over the gate.
This isn’t generic save-our-show messaging. It’s written by people who know exactly what they’re fighting for, which is the entire point the campaign keeps making.
Mallozzi: “Pretty Amazing”
Video of the billboard spread fast across X. One clip — credited to fan @BlazeISAF and shared by @IBREC — racked up more than 16,000 views within hours, drawing hundreds of reposts and likes as fans tagged Amazon MGM Studios directly.
Among those who saw it: longtime franchise producer Joe Mallozzi, who replied with a simple “Pretty amazing.”
Mallozzi has been the campaign’s most consistent voice from the start, and he hasn’t been shy about the stakes — recently arguing that genre executives hold their audiences in “contempt.” A fan-funded billboard in Times Square is the rebuttal in physical form.
Petition Closing In On 110,000
The billboard isn’t operating in a vacuum.
The “Save Stargate with Martin Gero” petition has now passed 109,000 verified signatures and is climbing toward 110,000, with hundreds more names added on the day of the Times Square event alone.
It blew past the symbolic 100,000 mark earlier this week and hasn’t slowed.
Stack it up: a banner plane, a Times Square billboard, six figures of verified signatures, and a cast — SG-1‘s Michael Shanks, Atlantis‘ Rachel Luttrell and Robert Patrick among them — lending their names.
For a series Amazon reportedly cut over fears it wouldn’t reach beyond the existing fanbase, that fanbase is doing a remarkable impression of an audience worth keeping.
Amazon Still Hasn’t Blinked
Through all of it, Amazon MGM Studios has said nothing, no comment on the petition, the flyover, or now a billboard in the middle of Manhattan.
The series was scrapped roughly 20 weeks into preproduction under Gero, Mallozzi, and Brad Wright, with fall filming planned, in a move widely tied to the studio’s executive shakeup.
Cosmic Book News reached out to Amazon MGM Studios for comment and still has not receive a response.
Organizers have made clear Times Square is a waypoint, not a finish line, with more activity planned through the summer, including a stated push timed to San Diego Comic-Con in July. The full schedule is posted at savestargate.com/events.
The fans keep reopening the iris. Whether anyone at Amazon MGM is watching the gate is still the only question that matters.
