A ‘Babylon 5’ Reboot Is in Development at the CW

The CW is aiming to reboot another sci-fi series.

Babylon 5 is in the developmental stage at the network and is described as “a from-the-ground-up reboot of the original series.” The original’s creator J. Michael Straczynski (Sense8) will executive produce and write through his Studio JMS.

According to the CW, in this new version, “John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, 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.”

The original Baylyon 5 premiered in 1993 with the pilot film, The Gathering. The series ran five seasons and 110 additional episodes beginning in 1994. Each season covered a year between 2257 and 2262, with the series the first to introduce the concept of a five-year arc (with a beginning, middle, and end). Its cast included Michael O’Hare, Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan, and Richard Biggs. The world of the series lived on after the finale, with Straczynski’s TNT series Crusade (which aired one season in 1999), seven feature-length films, and novels, novelizations, short stories, and comics from DC.

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The original series won two Emmys (for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects in 1993 and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series in 1994) and was nominated for another five.