New B5 In 07

Babylon 5 creator Joe Michael Straczynski (JMS) has been hinting of late that there would be a new Babylon 5 project announced during his appearance at the San Diego Comicon (the world’s largest comic book convention, which they have here every year).

I didn’t go to the Comicon (there are so many people there that, to quote Charleton Heston, "It’s a madhouse! A madhouse!"), but I did Google his appearance this weekend to see what was being reported about it online.

Here’s what I found:

–JMS sold a movie to Ron Howard. It’s a thriller/mystery movie set in the ˜20s in Los Angeles. They want to get it into production as fast as possible and JMS is flying up there on the 3rd to meet with Ron Howard and those guys to go over the script and make sure everything is where it needs to be. It’s going to be a big budget film. Ron Howard is a nice guy. The first time JMS had a phone conference with him about the script, JMS called him Mr. Howard and the reply was "You hired my dad on Babylon 5, you can call me whatever you want." Possibly it could be in production by the first part of next year.

–JMS was up in Toronto recently and they did a 12 episode radio drama series for the CBC called the Adventures of Apocalypse Al. It’s kind of a film noir style comedy drama science fiction supernatural series a la Men In Black or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s in little 5 minute chunks and it’s fall-down funny.

–A pilot for Touchstone has started for a dramatic prime time network series called BORROWED LIVES. It was actually sold last year but it was too late to go into development but now they’re actually in the script stage.

–[JMS’s comic book] RISING STARS is in development with Sam Raimi’s production company for a series.

–[JMS’s comic book] MIDNIGHT NATION is being bid on by two different studios for a movie.

–He pitched [his graphic novel] DREAM POLICE to a major studio, they want to do a motion picture and they’re negotiating now for JMS to write it.

–And there’s something else: WB came to him as they do periodically wanting to do something with B5. They asked if he wanted to do a feature film but JMS declined mainly because he can’t yet picture structuring a B5 movie "as long as Andreas and Rick insist on staying dead." Maybe in a year or two he’ll be able to but right now he can’t do something big. What JMS suggested was a bunch of short films ‘little mini-movies, an anthology show set in the Babylon 5 universe. They said, "Okay." There’s a network already interested in carrying them but they’re also planned for direct to DVD. This will be "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales", a lot of small stories that never made it into the series that he’s rediscovered notes for. And JMS wants no interference, complete creative support "in writing". They said, "Okay." And JMS wants to direct them. They said, "Okay." The first will be three individual stories about three of the main characters (to be determined). The plan is to shoot in September, post-production Oct.-Dec. and they’ll probably come out the second quarter of 2007 [SOURCE].

How he’s going to fit this in amid all the other projects he’s got going on, I’m not sure, but I’ll be interested to see what they come up with.

Incidentally, JMS himself adds a few more details over at JMSNews:

[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 [that’s the name of the script he sold to Ron Howard] 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.

I held off saying anything until I was cleared by WB to announce it as
a go project. Ultimately, whether we shoot in Vancouver or elsewhere
will be a function of the deal that gets made locally [SOURCE].

I was surprised at how little coverage there is on the Net so far, but a kindly reader also sent me a link to the coverage of the new B5 project on Ain’t It Cool News and–as commonly happens with AICN–they schmutz up the report with unnecessary offensive language and need to have their collective mouthes washed out with soap (make that lye soap, for good measure).

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin