The Ark Showrunner Promises Syfy's Best Series is Only Getting Started
Dean Devlin reveals how The Ark is building to something great.
Dean Devlin is the definition of a Hollywood veteran. After getting his start as a screenwriter in the 90s, he found a close collaborator with Roland Emmerich, the director and co-writer on Devlin’s projects Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla. He then moved on to television, directing and writing across multiple series. Now, he’s the creator and showrunner of The Ark, an original Syfy series that pays loving homage to the golden age of sci-fi.
But despite all this success, you can’t win them all. Devlin’s theatrical directorial debut, the 2017 disaster film Geostorm, underperformed and lost $71.6 million at the box office. But in the era of revisits and legacyquels, would Devlin ever make a Geostorm 2?
“We barely survived Geostorm 1,” he told Inverse at an interview at San Diego Comic-Con. “The truth of the matter is I was replaced on Geostorm. Someone else rewrote and redirected 60% of the movie. So it's not my film.”
But he doesn’t hold a grudge: we may still get The Devlin Cut. “If they ever want to go back and restore my version of the film, I'd be happy to do that and I'd be happy to go do a sequel to that.”
Though Devlin is credited on Geostorm, he was replaced after poor test screenings.
He doesn’t rule out returning to other past projects either. Stargate has evolved into a huge sci-fi franchise, but Devlin only wrote the first movie. He’d be down to work on a Stargate reboot but with one big condition: collaboration with Jonathan Glassner, the creator of Stargate SG-1 who is now a writer, director, and executive producer on The Ark.
The Ark star Christie Burke has seen both Devlin and Glassner in action and agrees it’s the only way forward. “I'm a big fan of Stargate and yeah, I think it would need both,” she told Inverse.
The Ark’s Next Steps
Christie Burke as Lt. Sharon Garnet in The Ark.
Devlin has his hands very full with The Ark, a Syfy original following a ship of humans looking for a new life across the stars and trying to survive after the loss of their commanders. Christie Burke plays Lt. Sharon Garnet, the de facto leader of her Ark who must navigate the crew through threats both internal and external. Now that Season 1 is well on its way to cult classic status, Season 2, currently airing on Syfy and streaming on Peacock, is upping the ante even more.
“In Season 1, it was really them trying to become leaders and trying to become the best versions of themselves,” Devlin said. “And kind of a disaster of the week. Every week was another disaster movie, right?” In Season 2, that’s only amplified.
“I think all of them have now kind of settled into their roles on the ship, and they've really become the people they wanted to be, and they've developed real relationships with each other,” he said. “But I think as a show, we really embrace some big sci-fi concepts this year.”
Christie Burke is anxious for everyone to see what’s ahead — even if it means holding her tongue. “People interview me and I'm like, ‘I can't tell you anything because I just want you to be as surprised as I was, chucking a script across a hotel room,’” she said. “I remember I texted Jonathan Glassner and I was like, ‘What?’ He just said, ‘Oh, you read it.’ And then I just started crying.”
Even though he’s more than accomplished in movies, The Ark gives Devlin the room to show what can happen when a story can take time and build upon itself. According to him, Season 2 is only the start. “I called Jonathan and I said, ‘I think the end of Season 2 is the end of the pilot, and then the series begins.’”
