Back in October of last year it was announced that Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski was teaming with Warner Bros. Television and The CW for a “from-the-ground-up reboot” of the classic 90s sci-fi series, but it seems fans are going to have to wait to see the project become a reality – if it ever does.
The reboot was not among the pilot pickups by The CW for this development season, and as reported by The Mary Sue, Straczynski has shared an update in a post on his Patreon and revealed that the door has not been closed completely.
“When a pilot script is not picked up to production, 99.999% of the time, that’s the end of the road for the project, the script is dead,” wrote Straczynski. “However: 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.) Calling the pilot ‘a damned fine script,’ he 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.”
“Here’s the bottom line,” Straczynski continued. “Yesterday, Babylon 5 was in active development at the CW and Warner Bros. for fall 2022. Today, Babylon 5 is in active development at the CW and Warner Bros. for fall 2023. That is the only difference.”
As initially reported, the Babylon 5 reboot was to have followed John Sheridan, ” 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.”
Are you still excited about the prospect of a new Babylon 5 series? What chances do you give the pilot script of being the 0.001% that makes it second time around? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Originally published March 1, 2022. Updated February 28, 2022.
