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During an extended series of tweets on Thursday evening, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski expressed at length that the award winning science fiction series’ current television rights holder Warner Bros. has no intention of either doing anything with the license themselves, or of letting anyone else do anything with it.
Won’t work. They literally told my agent “We have no plans, and no intentions, of letting anything else be done in terms of television with Babylon 5.” And a kickstarter wouldn’t pay for even a fraction of a season. That won’t change for years, when those execs are dead/gone. https://t.co/NZ80WiIIcR
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 20, 2018
They won’t sell. Because if it were to do well elsewhere, it would embarrass them. And studios don’t let out IP. So they’re like a monkey with its fist around a nut in a jar, it can’t pull it out and it won’t let go. https://t.co/04wyxk5rCd
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 20, 2018
When asked about when the rights might lapse into the public domain, he expressed that the terms are for the life of the owner plus 50. That means that Warner Bros. would have to fold, and then we all wait another 50 years, so that’s not an appreciable option.
They don’t. The rights are controlled for the life of the owner plus 50, and by contract the owner is Warners, so as long as that corporate entity exists, it’s “alive” and that will be probably forever. https://t.co/6BkurRnyTr
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 20, 2018
It seems that given his comments, there’s some execs at WB which hold a seriously long grudge. B5 originally launched on the short-lived PTEN network which existed effectively for as long as the series was on the air. The network was a joint venture between Warner Bros. Domestic Television arm of Time Warner and Chris-Craft Industries. Some of the WB execs had been shut out of playing with the PTEN toys and once that network folded, they continue to refuse to let anything happen with the beloved series.
No, Warner Bros. won’t spend an additional penny on Babylon 5 in any way, not for blu-rays, not for HD versions, or allow any other B5 series to be produced, same as for the other PTEN shows that the usual execs weren’t involved with, and thus still hold a grudge against. https://t.co/3wrS0eflUr
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 20, 2018
While the film rights are with JMS, without the accompanying television rights, other studios are loathe to get anywhere close to a cinematic-only option.
Warners controls the TV and all the other rights but not the movie rights, I have those, but without access to the TV rights it’s been very difficult to get anyone at another studio to want to commit anything; they want all of the rights under one roof. https://t.co/oxavktXrOr
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) April 20, 2018
That is a stark difference to his optimism that he’d had back in 2014 at San Diego Comic Con when he told an audience that he was looking to do a feature film as a reboot with new actors. He had been focusing on other series to continue building his footprint in Hollywood to be able to get B5 to the big screen. Unfortunately, with the cancellation of the critically acclaimed Netflix-based Sense8 after two seasons, the time may not yet be now. However given his teaming up with the Wachowskis, you never know what they might be able to come up with.
