The Return of … Babylon 5?!

It’s Woot-astic!

Joe Straczynski, at the San Diego Comic-Con, announced all sorts of stuff.  A correspondent to AICN recorded the following most significant item (to my mind): direct-to-DVD B5 releases called Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.

The biggest announcement I’ll paraphrase: Every 6 months, I get together with WB to discuss what to do something with B5. The DVD sales have raised over 500 million in revenue. Now, I produced B5s 110 episodes at about 90 million dollars. Somehow, B5 is still 50 million in the red. Every time I mention that to WB they say We made a good deal, huh? Anyway, they asked if I wanted to do a feature film but I declined mainly because I can’t yet picture structuring a B5 movie as long as [Andreas Katsulas] and [Richard
Biggs] insist on staying dead. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be able to but right now I can’t do something big and those two roles will NOT be recast.

So I thought about it, and I suggested a bunch of short films. Little mini-movies or an anthology show set in the Babylon 5 universe. I pick a character and develop an hour-long story around that character. Stories that I wanted to tell during the B5 series but never had the chance to develop. They said, Okay. I said I wanted complete creative control. Do not change my words that I write, and I want that in writing. They said, Okay. And I want to direct. They said, Okay.

This project was green lit less than two weeks ago. Its going to happen. Production starts in September in Vancouver, Canada. Post-production will occur from October to February with a release of the first three anthologies in the second quarter of 2007.

On the B5 Mailing List, Joe added this:

[W]e’re looking at 3 half-hour episodes/stories for the first DVD, with additional features and the like in the other half hour. Each story will be worked around a given established character, the specifics of which are still TBD contingent upon availabilities and other issues.

We have a budget, we’re greenlit, we’re going.

As for what prompted the interest now at WB…it’s only recently that they’ve finally run through all 5 seasons, which for many years now has been a constant source of revenue, and I think they would love to have something to continue to with. The recent news re: Changeling probably didn’t hurt, but the deal was actually being negotiated long before there *was* a feature film deal with Imagine. As I recall, we finalized the deal right around the time that the Imagine news was announced.

It was a rather extraordinary 24 hours.

All sorts of other stuff announced by JMS, too:

• As previously reported, a 1920s thriller/mystery movie called Changeling was sold to Ron Howard (the Imagine deal mentioned above).  It’s expected to be a big budget film, in production in early next year, and has made enough of a splash that, all of a sudden, JMS is big news in certain Hollywood circles.
• The CBC will be broadcasting a 12-episode radio series by Joe called The Adventures of Apocalypse Al, a noir sf comedy along the lines of Men in Black or Hitchhikers Guide.  Joe notes that it will eventually migrate to US radio and CD.
• Touchstone is starting production on a pilot for a dramatic prime time series called Borrowed Lives.
• Rising Stars, Joe’s “real life” super-hero maxi-series, is in development with Sam Raimi’s production company for a TV series.
• Midnight Nation, another Joe comic mini-series, is being bid on by two different movie studios.
• A major studio is evidently interested in his one-shot Dream Police for a movie, to be written by Joe.

Triffic stuff.  I think there’s a lot of room for anthological tales of the B5 universe — a whole post-Season 5 world, at the very least (which would deal with several years having passed for the actors, too).  While many other TV SF shows have grabbed onto my heart since B5 went off the air — Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who — Joe’s show holds a very special place for me.  Here’s hoping it’s a success.

(via Les)