He may not owe the fans anything Jan. We all know it was a five year arc but without the fans, B5 would have never been around past the first season. And here, more then ten years after the last episode, sites like this are still around because of our love for the show. Babylon 5 is his creation. His baby but from what I have read, he wants and has, complete control over a B5 movie and I understand that. But he seems to have closed off the possiblitiy of anyone else being able to contribute anything of value to the B5 universe.
'Seems' being the operative word given that we've got very little data. The potential projects we've seen from anybody else are:
A) The novels from Mongoose. Regardless of any other foofooraw that surrounded them, I personally saw samples of three of them. 2.5 of them were
horrible. Claudia's
might have been okay given a decent editor but there was no indication tha Mongoose had a decent editor.
B) An unnamed computer game which JMS said that he vetoed due to it being (paraphrasing) 'another low-budget project' [along the lines of the Lost Tales].
Other than those, as far as we know, nobody else has approached JMS or WB with a legitimate offer and/or business plan to contribute anything else in the B5 universe.
Often fans say that Crusade should be completed in novels. Granted, JMS has said the *he* has no plans to do so because to his mind Crusade was conceived as a visual project. Could others? We know Mongoose was licensed to do just that so evidence suggest that yes, they could.
Other fans say that more B5 comics would be nice. The only thing we know about more comics is that JMS seems to have an outstanding contract with Wildstorm to do a 100-page B5 graphic novel. Key there is that JMS has that contract. He can't hand it off to somebody else he might choose. Anybody else who wanted to do so would have to approach (I believe) DC and/or WB. Have they? We don't have any way of knowing.
So to my way of thinking, that whole 'seems to have closed off the possibility...' is all very much in the mind of the fans and not necessarily backed up by anything concrete.
I understand he wants to do justice to what has come before but to me and i think others, the Telepath War on the big screen or maybe in a mini series, is a no brainer.
The Telepath War isn't a story idea, it's a setting. My personal taste is away from action and battles and explosions and toward character events. As many others have also said, a big-budget, $50- to $100-millon dollar motion picture is going to have to be accessible and popular with the general audience, not just the B5 fans or it'll be the death of ever seeing any more of that universe in any form. That being the case, I very much want JMS to be very sure and very passionate about whatever story he decides to tell in the first of hopefully several B5 feature films.
From what I have read, most of the actors want more B5 and its safe to say that the fans are in agreement with that. We are happy with the five years but because of what B5 is and was, we are left wanting more.
I agree. I'd love more. But I'm also content with what we've got if that's the way it works out.
Jan