Babylon 5 Creator Offers First Reboot Update of 2023
The Babylon 5 revival planned for a release on The CW is not dead, according to series creator J. Michael Straczynski. Straczynski took to his Patreon to express frustration with online reports that suggest a lack of news means the show is not going to happen, saying instead that no news is not bad news, it's no news. Straczyski, who has been writing in TV and comics for decades, says that networks don't tend to just make a decision and then withhold that information, and that when the show is picked up (or not), he expects to be one of the first to know, at which point he will update fans.
The last major update came from The CW's former chief Mark Pedowitz, who promised the show wasn't dead yet last May, around the time The CW was being sold and a number of high-profile shows had been cancelled.
"Every year, networks and streamers develop tons of pilot scripts, and a smaller parcel of produced pilots, only a small fraction of which cross the finish line into being ordered as series," Straczynski explained. "For those that don't get ordered, this is what happens: The network or streamer calls the writer/producer, or that person's agent, and tells them. I've gotten that call plenty of times over the years."
"That call has not come," he added. He gives more insight and details at the link above.
The Babylon 5 reboot is described as a "from-the-ground-up reboot" and will focus on a character from the original, John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background assigned to the Babylon 5 space station, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space. Sheridan's arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined when an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us.
The original Babylon 5 first debuted in 1993 as a television movie that was meant to boost the now-defunct Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). Following the movie, the series was ordered into production and premiered on January 26, 1994. The series ultimately ran for five seasons and 110 episodes, moving from PTEN to TNT following PTEN shutting down in 1997. The series also spawned numerous TV movies and spinoffs as well as tie-in novels and comics. The original series starred Michael O'Hare, Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Jerry Doyle, and Mira Furlan.
Nexstar recently purchased 75% of The CW, and has focused on appealing to older audiences with inexpensive, unscripted content. This year, both Supernatural and Walker got spinoffs, but it isn't yet clear what the future of most of their scripted programming is.