Trek Shorts creator Samuel Cockings has opened a GoFundMe campaign, part of his team’s #SaveStargate efforts. The campaign aims to finish a viral Stargate fan film and build toward a full fan-made 10-episode web series. The campaign is a direct response to Amazon’s decision to scrap its in-development Stargate revival.
Amazon MGM Studios gave the new Stargate series a straight-to-series order in November 2025, with Martin Gero attached as showrunner. Gero had worked on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe earlier in his career, and brought back original film writers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin as executive producers alongside consulting producers Brad Wright and Joseph Mallozzi. The show spent nearly 20 weeks in the writers’ room and was preparing to shoot in the UK. Then, in June, Amazon canceled it before a single frame was filmed, reportedly over concerns that Gero’s approach leaned too heavily into existing continuity to pull in viewers beyond the franchise’s built-in fanbase.
Fans did not take the news quietly. A Change.org petition demanding Amazon reverse the decision climbed past 60,000 signatures, and the hashtag #SaveStargate has been running across social media for months with no response from Amazon.
Cockings is now trying to turn that frustration into something fans can watch, and he is not new to the franchise. He directs what he describes as the most-watched Stargate fan film on YouTube, a film he released in 2012 that has held the top spot for 14 years (at 156,000 views), and he followed it a decade later with a mini-episode built to show how far his effects work had come. In between, he built a reputation across the wider fan film community through his Star Trek web series Trekyards and through Trek Shorts, the anthology project behind releases like Temporal Anomaly, A Long Way From Home, and a run of Star Trek/Stargate crossover shorts. He told Fandom Pulse he has spent the last four years self-funding and building out the CGI assets for new Stargate projects on his own, without outside backing, slowly accumulating the pieces he needed to attempt something new: a set of films that tied together each Stargate TV show in a brand-new story. This new viral fan film is something new and a direct reaction to the cancellation, it is the biggest Stargate film he has made, with more space shots and interior sets than any release he has put out before, Star Trek included, and he is treating it as a return to where he started in fan films, now with over a decade of added skill behind it.
The GoFundMe is structured in funding tiers against a £10,000 goal for this first phase. £2,000 finishes the viral short already in production, getting it past the finish line at the speed the team wants. £4,000 covers hero-quality, screen-accurate SG-1 and Atlantis uniforms in multiple sizes so guest actors outside the regular cast can appear in future episodes. £6,000 funds custom hero-quality props, some built from original molds used on the shows. £8,000 adds episode-specific uniforms, including flight suits, patches, and SGU jackets. Hitting the full £10,000 funds the first batch of shoots for the wider viral series, with anything raised beyond that going toward filming more of it. As of this week, the campaign has raised just over £1,000 from nine donors.
Part of what separates this project from past fan efforts is access to real production history. Cockings’ father, Steven, has spent nearly 20 years collecting original screen-used Stargate props and costumes, including pieces from Atlantis, SG-1, the Tok’ra, the Jaffa, the Tollan, and the Lucian Alliance. If the series gets funded, those pieces go in front of the camera. Actress Emma Thorne has already signed on for a potential Ancient character and filmed a test short wearing a screen-used costume from the Atlantis episode “Aurora.”
Cockings has called this the first project he would actually walk away from without funding, given the scale of the work involved, and said Stargate has been part of his life since childhood, which is why he felt he had to attempt it. He is aiming for 50,000 to 100,000 views on the viral short if fans turn out for it, numbers he says would double as a message to Amazon that the appetite for original-timeline Stargate did not go away when the show did.
Fans can back the campaign directly at GoFundMe: SaveStargate fan film Fan Web Series.
With Amazon sitting on the IP and showing no sign of moving, is fan-funded production like this the fastest way back through the gate, or does it only give the studio more reason to let the franchise sit?
I like this.
I've watched Cocking's skills grow from his early days on TrekYards. As always, I'm surprised that some effects house hasn't hired him to run their department. He's just that good.