Seemingly going unnoticed at the San Diego Comic-Con last month, J. Michael Straczynski has revealed that a feature film reboot of the cult space opera series Babylon 5 is in the works, and is aiming to go into production in early 2015. Here’s the statement from JMS, via ScienceFiction.com:
“So we’ve been having a really, really good year at Studio JMS. And where that comes in handy – where it’s kind of important involves this (B5 logo comes on screen). So… Fact: When I made the Babylon 5 deal with Warner Bros. it was just short of indentured servitude. Financially, I’ll never seen a dime out of Babylon 5 ever. I have no problems with that; I knew what I was signing when I go into it, but I mention it to piss them off every once in a while. One thing that I was able to withhold was the film rights. I still own the movie rights to Babylon 5. I’ve been pushing Warner’s for the last…ever since the early cretaceous period…to “Let’s do a Babylon 5 movie – a proper big budget feature film.” And they’ve always dragged their feet [because] that’s what Warner Bros. does. They knew that they had the upper hand because I couldn’t take it to any other studio because these days all the studios want all the rights. So if I brought it to say, Sony or Fox, they’d want the TV rights which Warner Bros. controls. Warner Bros. will never give those rights up so we were always handcuffed by that.
“Turns out, however, there’s one studio in Los Angeles…Distributors, by the way, don’t care about the TV rights. Distributors just [care] about the movie, they don’t care about the TV part. There’s one studio in town that doesn’t care if it doesn’t have the TV rights…that wants to see this movie made and will do it with or without Warner Bros. (Studio JMS logo comes on screen). Here’s the plan: We’re going to have, through Studio JMS, at least two, maybe three TV series on the air next year. We’re going to have at least one or two movies going ahead. And we’ll use that to parlay serious investment in the studio. I’m not talking Kickstarter, I’m talking about one hundred million dollars, two hundred million dollars; we already have people who are lined up and interested in doing that.”
Premiering in 1993, Babylon 5 centred on the inhabitants of the Babylon 5 space statio over a five year story arc. It ran for a total of 5 seasons and 110 episodes, along with six TV movies and a spin-off series Crusade. It was particularly notable for its use of CGI special effects, and its serialised approach to storytelling.
Are you excited about the prospect of returning to Babylon 5 for a feature film? Let us know your thoughts…
Originally published August 9, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
