JMS announced Babylon 5 film effort

Hello -

I'm new to this board. I just read articles from last year and one from this year about JMS saying at a Comic Con that he intends to do a screenplay for a B5 film reboot this year and have it begin filming in 2016.

While it is hard to imagine JMS condensing five years of show into one (or maybe multiple movies), I think if his efforts pan out it would be a perfect opportunity for JMS to tell the original B5 story that he may have intended from first filming "Midnight on the Firing Line". I hope it's an idea of each season being its own film.

Imagine that Talia Winters stuck around on the show and was the main telepath all the way through. Imagine Sinclair actually stuck around and the show ended with "War Without End" and him becoming Valen as intended. Imagine Season 4 ended with "Intersections in Real Time" and Season 5 did not have as much fluff as it did and still had Ivonova.

I love the original show A LOT, but this would keep the movie(s) interesting for existing fans as well as bring the franchise to a new audience similar to the Star Trek reboot as well as The Walking Dead TV show (which while based on comics makes efforts to not be a carbon copy of the comics). This idea would preserve the legacy of the original show as its own beast, while having the movie version being its own beast as well. The idea of bringing back original cast members in new roles would be cool to see.

I'd love to hear what folks think of this idea.

Cheers.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014...ts-to-reboot-babylon-5-as-a-big-budget-movie/

http://whatculture.com/tv/babylon-5-5-problems-the-new-movie-will-need-to-overcome.php/6

I would imagine if this does get made it will be a much more focused plot around the Sinclair(or Sinclair like character) rather than having the same kind of depth as the series.

Honestly I can see the sense in wanting to go that route as for me the Centauri/Narn and Londo/G'Kar stories are the hardest to picture being remade/recast although I spose you could have Jurasik return.

The number one requirement for the movie is that it rekindle interest in B5. If it is successful at that, who knows what we might get in return? At the lowest level-the original episodes might be more widely available on Netflix or some other site. A little higher up-maybe a "special edition" of the original series. Or, dare we even dream-a brand new series? And, if it comes to that, I'm fine with a reboot--hey, if it's good enough for Shakespeare, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes...However, I do believe that you could tell the original story (more or less) BUT focus on what's going on outside the station, at Minbar, Earth, Mars, etc. and have a great companion series. Call it the War of Shadows or sumthin.

Thus, I reject your poll's binary choices.

falstaffe said:

Thus, I reject your poll's binary choices.

Click to expand...

Haha I was having some trouble with the poll as well, but I often find polls impossible to answer, so I thought it was just me. Making a poll that allows for all possible answers and various nuances is hard to do!

So, I can't vote, but I think it's an excellent topic for discussion. I have been feeling both excited and somewhat anxious about this announcement. I would love to see my favorite SF universe live again! But, whenever some treasured movie or TV show is revived, there's some worry, too. What if it sucks?? Then again, no amount of reboot suckage can take away from the excellence of the original show, so I should just relax about it. And maybe have some confidence in people whose work I still admire twenty years later.

I would be OK with a reboot or a whole new show set in the B5 universe. Either one could be all kinds of amazing.

as mentioned elsewhere, BB is now at an age where he could pull off playing an older and wiser sheridan. Would JMS go down that route and leave the TV series alone? I really do not know. A reboot could be any number of things. It's all guesswork and wishful thinking at the moment.

To the OP: Not sure if you know about this yet. I found out about it on this site. Apparently JMS' original story about B5 and specifically Sinclair was much different as it turned out. If you don't know about it and would like to find out here's some links:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/tv-talk/531215-babylon-5-original-arc-finally-revealed-spoilers.html

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=53739

The ideas from this blew my mind. And if there was ever a reboot of the series, I think I would like it to go this route since it was radically different from what was aired.

vorlonlovechild said:

as mentioned elsewhere, BB is now at an age where he could pull off playing an older and wiser sheridan. Would JMS go down that route and leave the TV series alone? I really do not know. A reboot could be any number of things. It's all guesswork and wishful thinking at the moment.

Click to expand...

If they cast similar character again I think Jurasik would be the easiest to return to the same role, he was aged a bit in the original and unlike most of the other major roles I think Londo could work as an older character.

As I said though my guess would be that if JMS is looking at a single film(at least something that will work as a single film even if sequels or a series spinoff were possible) he might well be looking at a slimmed down story focusing more on a central human characters akin to Sinclair/Sheridan. Maybe the mystery around the Earth/Minbari war and that character role in why it ended explored?

Honestly my feeling would be why bother just rebooting B5 and doing exactly the same story again? the original is already a classic so you might as well create something new by giving a new twist on similar material.