Babylon 5 Reboot Might Officially Be Dead at The CW
If the planned revival of J. Michael Straczynski's beloved series Babylon 5 does make it to the small screen anytime soon, it seems like The CW won't be the place for it. Yesterday, the network released its 2023-2024 fall schedule, in which almost all of the content is either unscripted, or acquired content produced elsewhere. With only two CW originals on the schedule so far, the odds seem vanishingly small that the network will be picking up a new sci-fi show. The network, which has been the home to genre fare such as Supernatural, The Flash, and Charmed over the past 20 years, is taking a hard pivot, and Babylon 5 doesn't seem to be the kind of show they're pivoting toward.
The schedule includes no comic book adaptations for the first time since Arrow and only the second time since 2001. Genre content in general has been scaled way back with the end of The Winchesters and Riverdale (hell yeah, it counts).
With All-American and Walker now holding down the fort as The CW's flagship series, nobody is quite sure what the fate of Superman & Lois or Gotham Knights is yet. Things like Justice U and Powerpuff seem dead, and despite numerous protestations from Straczynski, it seems increasingly likely that if he turns out a script for a Babylon 5 pilot that the studio likes, they will be looking for another network to air it.
"We've already given those back to the studios," Brad Schwartz, The CW's President of Entertainment, told TVLine when asked about projects developed under former network head Mark Pedowitz. "So they're free to develop those and sell them anywhere."
Nexstar, who bought 75% of The CW from its former owners Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery in October, is still -- at least in theory -- open to developing shows that cost money. They have a Librarians spinoff in development, which wouldn't be cheap. But yesterday they also bemoaned the fact that Superman & Lois delivers good ratings, but is not fully controlled by The CW, who can't run prior-season reruns and does not profit from streaming revenue for the show. Like other series from Warner Bros. Television, who produces the series, Superman & Lois went to HBO Max (soon to be just Max, because this is the dumbest timeline) for streaming. There have been persistent rumors that the series is co-funded by HBO Max, but those do not appear to be true, at least in any direct way (obviously buying the streaming rights helps underwrite the program).
TVLine's article doesn't address Babylon 5 directly, but seems to do so by omission, mentioning a number of projects in development at the network (including the Librarians spinoff and a number of unscripted shows) and Babylon 5 isn't on the list.
That said, the show has been declared dead by the media a number of times, and Straczynski has shot back more than once.
"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, promising that when it does, he will let audiences know so that they aren't waiting indefinitely for news.
Babylon 5 has an animated project currently in active development, which is likely taking up a lot of bandwidth for the brand. The live-action reboot has been in the works since 2021 at The CW, with regular updates from Straczynski that mostly boil down to "I'm still working away at it." Still, given the 2021 timeline and Schwartz's comments about projects in development under the previous management, it seems like you can connect the dots to say that this series is unlikely to resurface at The CW.