SCI FI Channel and MGM Television Entertainment have reached an agreement to extend MGM's "Stargate" brand with a new series for the Channel. Production on 20 one-hour episodes of Stargate Atlantis, a weekly series based on the popular "Stargate" franchise, will begin in early 2004. Stargate Atlantis is slated to premiere in Summer '04, in tandem with the Season Eight launch of Stargate SG-1, exclusively on SCI FI.

Stargate SG-1 centers on the Stargate, an ancient portal that allows instantaneous travel across the galaxy. Stargate Atlantis will take viewers on a brand-new adventure, with a whole new team. In the new series, a secret base left by the originators of the Stargate is discovered in the most unlikely of places — on Earth, buried among the ruins of the legendary city of Atlantis. The implications of this amazing discovery lead the Atlantis team to a distant galaxy where a primitive human civilization is threatened by a sinister new enemy.