Babylon 5 Creator J. Michael Straczynski Reveals What Allowed The Road Home to Get Made (Exclusive)

Babylon 5 is back. The J. Michael Straczynski-created franchise debuted its first new project in over 20 years this week in the form of Babylon 5: The Road Home, an animated feature film that continues the ever-expansive galactic lore. Bruce Boxleitner reprises his role as John Sheridan in an adventure that pulls him through time and space, consequently bringing viewers through many of Babylon 5‘s most significant moments over the course of the multi-decade franchise.

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Straczynski mentioned that his goal with Babylon 5: The Road Home was to play the hits for longtime fans while also utilizing a storytelling framework that creates new ones.

“I wanted to do a love letter to the fans who are already there, but also I’ve reached a point in my career where I wanted to explore things like beauty and love and friendship more and more,” Straczynski said. “When I first started out, it was all about plot and blowing stuff up. That was my main agenda. Now I’ve gotten to where I’m looking at other things. It’s about a story about a guy lost in time or lost in space who has to try and find his way home again and is drawn back by the beacon of love and by his friend’s stuff that has past.”

Boxleitner is one of multiple original cast members from the 1990s television show to reprise his role in this new animated installment. As revealed by Straczynski, their universal agreement to return is the only reason why The Road Home happened at all.

“When Warners first came to me about doing this, I wrote an email that I sent off to all these surviving cast members to say, ‘Look, we have a great opportunity here to bring back the show, to tell a great story, to write a love letter to the fans. But the flip side is you may be asked to act with actors who are replacing your fallen friends, and are you okay with that? If there’s even one person here who says, ‘No, I’m not ready for that yet, I’m not good with that,’ we won’t do it, we’ll let it go,’” Straczynski said. “But they all came back and said they wanted to do it, and they felt that there would be a good chance to do a memorial to those fallen friends and sort of immortalize their performances.”

Babylon 5: The Road Home is now available on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD.