‘Babylon 5’ reboot in the works on the CW – The Hollywood Reporter



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The CW is heading into space.

The younger broadcaster is teaming up with original series creator J. Michael Straczynski for a reboot of Babylon 5.

Described as a “reboot from the ground up” of the original, Straczynski will script a potential new take on the former Warner Bros. syndicated drama. TV. The new take revolves around John Sheridan (originally played by Bruce Boxleitner), 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 foreign diplomats at a time of precarious peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival sparks a fate beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory venture of Earth accidentally sets off a conflict with a civilization a million years before us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew. in the sights as the last, the best hope for the survival of the human race.

The potential series comes from Warner Bros. TV. Straczynski will provide executive production through his Studio JMS. Warners originally developed Babylon 5: The Gathering as a single film that aired on its former Prime Time entertainment network in 1993. After launching with good returns, Warners took it over to series. The drama starring Michael O’Hare, Boxleitner, Clausia Christian, Jerry Doyle and Mira Furlan ran for five seasons and 110 episodes. When PTEN closed in 1997, the drama moved to TNT for its fifth season. The series spawned a spin-off, that of TNT Crusade, as well as seven feature films as Straczynski plotted the years 2245-2281 when the Babylon 5 station was taken out of service. The franchise was lucrative for Warners and also extended to a series of novels, short stories, and comics, among other sources of income.

Straczynski has won numerous genre awards, including a Hugo, Saturn, the Space Frontier Foundation Award, and the Ray Bradbury Award. After the original series, Straczynski continued to tell stories in the Babylon 5 universe, with the TNT series Crusade, seven subsequent feature films and a series of DC novels, novelties, short stories and comics.

Most recently, Straczynski created, wrote, and served as a Netflix showrunner. Sens8 (alongside the Wachowski). His credits include Changeling, Underworld: Awakening, World War Z and Thor, among others. The television, film and comic book writer recently published his new novel, Together we will go. He is replaced by A3 Artists Agency and Gendler-Kelly.

Should Babylon 5 moving forward, this would provide another key franchise revival for The CW and Warners at a time when well-known IP has become increasingly important as networks and streamers seek to break through a crowded landscape. Building franchises has also become imperative as linear ratings – and ad revenue – decline as viewers continue to flock to streaming.



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