‘Babylon 5’ Reboot Development Pushed Back by The CW to 2023
Babylon 5 fans will have to wait a little longer for a potential reboot of the beloved sci-fi series as The CW has pushed the project back to the next development season.
A “from-the-ground-up reboot” of J. Michael Straczynski’s space opera was announced last September and was set to follow John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious past, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space. His arrival triggers a major conflict, 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.
According to Straczynski, the show has now been put on the back burner for at least another year. Updating his fans on Patreon, the acclaimed filmmaker revealed that the pilot has not been picked up for this development season, stating, “99.999% of the time, that’s the end of the road for the project.” (via Deadline)
However, he explained that The CW CEO Mark Pedowitz had not given up on the reboot. “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,” Straczynski wrote. “Calling the [reboot] 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 [prospective] sale of the CW.”
He continued, “Here’s the bottom line: 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.”
The original Babylon 5 premiered on February 22, 1993, with a test pilot film, The Gathering, and went on to air for five seasons beginning in 1994. The series, which starred Michael O’Hare, Bruce Boxleitner, and Claudia Christian, received critical acclaim and multiple Emmy nominations during its run, including wins for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup.
Babylon 5, TBA, The CW
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