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Babylon 5 Reboot Made "Some Significant Progress" Before Strike Moves

J. Michael Straczynski on how the Babylon 5 reboot made "some significant progress" before the threat of a writers' strike left it in limbo.

Published Mon, 17 Apr 2023 20:54:45 -0500

by Ray Flook

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Back in November 2022 was when we last checked in on how things were going with J. Michael Straczynski's "from-the-ground-up" Babylon 5 reboot. At the time, Straczynski was pushing back on rumblings that The CW's new owners, Nexstar, had passed on the project: "there's truly no decision because the decision-makers haven't decided." Nearly five months later, it sounds like there's a "Jekyll/Hyde" update that we can pass along directly from Straczynski. In response to a question about the status of the reboot, JMS shared that "some significant progress" was being made. But that was before a potentially major, industry-wide Film & TV obstacle reared its ugly head. Earlier today, the members of the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike on May 1st if current negotiations can't lead to a new agreement by that time. Leading up to the vote, studios & producers began pulling back on production development as a positioning move against the writers. And because of that, JMS tweets, the project is in a holding pattern until there's a deal. "The pain in the ass is that we were just making some significant progress on this count," JMS write in his tweet. "Then, a few weeks ago, all TV/film development stopped to start putting the screws to writers ahead of a strike, so like everyone else in town, we [are] in a holding pattern.

Here's a look at JMS's tweet from earlier today, followed by an abbreviated rundown of how we got here:

The pain in the ass is that we were just making some significant progress on this count. Then a few weeks ago all TV/film development stopped to start putting the screws to writers ahead of a strike, so like everyone else in town we in a holding pattern. https://t.co/zXB9Kw48Oc

— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 18, 2023

A Brief History of JMS's Babylon 5 Revival Project

JMS first revealed that the pilot had not been picked up but that then-The CW President Mark Pedowitz spoke with him to confirm that the pilot was still in active development back in February of this year. JMS began his update by referencing the biggest news surrounding The CW over the past few weeks and how it would play a factor in "how many pilots, and what sort, could be picked up during this transition." That transition? The rumored (and now long-finalized) sale of the network by Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Global (previously ViacomCBS) to Nexstar. As JMS wrote, "pre-existing deals" and prior "commitments" would then play heavily into the decision-making.

After realizing that the Babylon 5 pilot had not been picked up, JMS shared the outreach that Pedowitz did to explain the pilot's status. "I received a call from Mark Pedowitz, President of The CW. (I should mention that Mark is a great guy and a long-time fan of B5. He worked for Warners when the show was first airing and always made sure we got him copies of the episodes before they aired because he didn't want to wait to see what happened next.)," JMS revealed. "Calling the pilot 'a damned fine script,' he [Pedowitz] said he was taking the highly unusual step of rolling the project and the pilot script into next year, keeping B5 in active development while the dust settles on the sale of the CW."

Straczynski's series proposal focuses on John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner in the original series), an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers, and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race.

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