Weird Facts About Stargate (1994 film)

James Spader (Daniel) thought the script was awful and did the movie for the money.

• True

• False

Test audiences hated the film...

• True

• False

 Every single one of the ‘extras’ were actually hired locals.

• True

• False: Some of them were mannequins!

Davidson (Ra) a trans person who was NOT an actor, did not want to go into the acting profession-so they demanded a million dollar paycheck. The producers agreed.

• True: They did not want to be in the film, so demanded a bunch of money because they thought the producers would never pay it!

• False

A clerk in a music store worked on amateur videos,

but impressed the Stargate producers and was hired for the soundtrack.

• True: This movie made him famous!

• False

It inspired an animated Stargate TV show.

• True: But it only ran for 1 season.

• False

Producers were encouraged to include references to Area 51 in Stargate.

• True

• False: They were forbidden to do so!

The producers actually stole the script from a

high school teacher and lost the case in court.

• True: In 1995, high school teacher Omar Zuhdi came forward to claim that the entire film was stolen from a manuscript that he had written as a college student. Zuhdi’s former Egyptology professor from Johns Hopkins university was able to vouch for the teacher. He claimed he had submitted his manuscript to 20th Century Fox, who rejected it in 1984, five years before the writers of Stargate had even met. He demanded 140 million $ but only won 50,000.

• False

Stargate was the first film to have its own website.

• True: In the 1990's movie websites did not exist. But the sci-fi nature of the film appealed to the "tech-nerds" so a website was built and it started a trend for all films.

• False

The box office records were terribly low when Stargate was released in the month of October.

• True

• False: it made the highest box office gross EVER for any movie released in October (up until 1994).