Babylon 5 Theatrical Movie Falls Through

duck2ducks writes "According to a post from JMS, the Babylon 5 feature film has been cancelled. This is sad news indeed for all fans of one of the best sci-fi stories ever produced." From Straczynski's post: "In the end, however, the deal could be put together, and it did not look as if that was going to change at any point in the foreseeable future. So the option has reverted, and to all intents and purposes, the project has dead ended."

Comments

Theyy were NOT space angels!

[Quiet_Desperation]

It wasn't space angels, which would be dumb. It was advanced aliens trying to convince people they were space angels for the advanced alien's own selfish ends, which is cool. :)

The big missed oppurtunity was, when they were granted a 5th season, to do the Psi war on Earth. That would have been a good season.

I'm not a fanboy, but I was sufficiently entertained by the thing. You know what I liked the most about B5? It was so NOT the Trek universe of no money and everyone performing in string quartets in their free time. In B5 there was an economy, and trading, and the conflicts arising from such things. The telepaths were licensed and it was a professional position. One character watched old Daffy Duck cartoons in his spare time, and was building a motorcycle in his quarters. There were prejudices and factions and ill will from bulkhead to bulkhead. Space travel was a large and involved endeavor requiring complicated instrumentality.

And best of all, at least some of the aliens were not bipedal. Hell, I'd take space angels over the bumpy forehead of the week rut that trek got stuck in.

JMS post #2

[Anonymous Coward]

> No wonder WB likes B5 -- they don't have to pay you anything for it.
> Kind of puts a different light on buying the DVDs and stuff, knowing
> we're just supporting some fat-ass studio execs and not the actual
> talent.

That's the great irony of the situation. The criteria told to us right up front while we were producing B5 was that each of the series on PTEN had to show a profit *in that year* in order to stay on the air and be renewed. So we'd have these meetings with studio heads who were congratulating us on how much money the show was making for them (again, while we were still making for it), and then look at me, realize what they'd said, and hurriedly add, "Though technically we're still in the red."

The show, all in, cost about $110 million to make. Each year of its original run, we know it showed a profit because they TOLD us so. And in one case, they actually showed us the figures. It's now been on the air worldwide for ten years. There's been merchandise, syndication, cable, books, you name it. The DVDs grossed roughly half a BILLION dollars (and that was just after they put out S5, without all of the S5 sales in).

So what does my last profit statement say? We're $80 million in the red.

Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits.

But then again, I knew that was the situation going in...I saw the writing on the wall (and the contract) from the git-go. I didn't do this to build an empire, I wanted to tell this story...and that's worth more than anything else.

Doesn't mean I can't tweak 'em about it, though.

jms

Sad.

[Grendel Drago]

I came to Babylon 5 rather late, after it had originally aired. I remember seeing individual episodes from the first season, and thinking that, meh, the effects were pretty spiffy but I really didn't know who anyone was.

I watched the whole thing last year and came to a somewhat different conclusion. jms ruined me for lesser SF. I can no longer stand most TNG or DS9 episodes. (Though I may yet watch DS9 as a whole---maybe it's good that way.)

jms made a five-year novel-for-television. We shall not see one man's vision so clearly transferred to the small screen for a long, long time, if ever again.

This is just a final middle-finger from the industry to jms. Punks.

--grendel drago