Babylon 5

[captainkirk]

Woohoo! Bring on the Keffer shonen anime!

Seriously though, this is the last thing I was expecting from the tease last week. It occurs to me that since there's often a long lead time with animated projects, there's a small chance Mira Furlan could have recorded something for this before she passed away.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, I really don't think a "raucous, heartfelt, nonstop, a ton of fun through time and space & a love letter to the fans." exactly screams "Telepath War!" to me. Or Shadow, or Drakh War, or any grim, action heavy setting.
Something more along the lines of 'To Dream in the City of Sorrows' or 'The Deconstruction of Falling Stars' sounds closer to the mark. Though even those have a certain melancholic tone that doesn't quite gel with that description either.
Indeed, the only "fun" part of B5 was the characters themselves, so that tells me this will be very much character focused, not about some big grand event.

Also, not to put a dampener on things; but the original actors that are still with us by definition limits the scope of what it can do because I don't think there's any way in hell he'd ever recast.
So working backwards from who's left means we'll probably be getting; Sheridan, Ivanonva, Londo, Lyta, Lennier, Lochley, (and *maybe* Bester?) I can see a tight, fun little romp with most of those characters.

I don't think it's technically a bottle show. It's just the one set, but I think it was still a new set.

I've always preferred to think of it as a three person play, that just so happens to been put on as an episode of television instead of on stage at a theatre.

 

[Farscape One]

I've always preferred to think of it as a three person play, that just so happens to been put on as an episode of television instead of on stage at a theatre.

I can definitely see that.

My calling it a bottle episode is definitely not a dig. Some of the episodes of the ST franchise were bottle shows. My view, anyway.

 

[captainkirk]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it'll be about the first Shadow war. To me, the best way to use animation in this franchise is to tell a story that only has aliens. I'll probably be wrong, but it's what I'm guessing right now.

 

[Steve Roby]

I'm still just mildly curious, nowhere near excited yet. We don't even know if this is being broadcast, streamed, or straight to DVD/blu-ray. And "love letter to the fans"? Isn't that how Berman and Braga described the last episode of Enterprise?

 

[Hound of UIster]

But Michael O'Hare is gone and he'd the presumed lynchpin of a Valen movie. Telepath War seems most viable given that Koenig, Tallman and Mumy are all alive. And the Telepath War is one of the dangling plots from the originals. The others include:
1) the second burning of Centauri Prime and the redemption of Londo and the expulsion of the Drakh
2) the misuse of the shadowtech by various factions especially the EA
3) the rise of new actors to challenge the ISA

One was covered in the novels. Two and Three were done in Crusade and Legend of the Rangers.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Since JMS considers the novels canon (edit: rather the three trilogies and two of the solos) and Stephen Furst is gone, there's no way it'll be about Centauri Prime.

I understand the argument against the Telepath War...but I'm still hopeful. We'll know for certain in a week!

 

[Guy Gardener]

It will be about David Sheridan the golden child.

 

[Dee1891]

Great, an animated movie. That's the thing I would have least suspected but it makes a lot of sense. Hope it's 90 minutes or longer.

An animated movie? That's the best they can do? Wow, Hollywood is really getting cheap.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

An animated movie? That's the best they can do? Wow, Hollywood is really getting cheap.

The only thing cheap here is this comment.

Animated films are extraordinary and are able to achieve certain things live-action films cannot do. There have been many animated films over the years that I could not see working in live action, from The Secret of NIMH to Grave of the Fireflies to Inside Out to Wolfwalkers to name just a few.

Just because you look down on animated films doesn't take away what could be a great film in its own right.

Plus, as already noted by myself and others, this allows all of the actors to return and not worry about physical appearances in age.

 

[Farscape One]

The only thing cheap here is this comment.

Animated films are extraordinary and are able to achieve certain things live action cannot do. There are have been many animated films over the years that I could not see working in live action, from The Secret of NIMH to Grave of the Fireflies to Inside Out to Wolfwalkers to name just a few.

Just because you look down on animated films doesn't take away what could be a great film in its own right.

Plus, as already noted by myself others, this allows all of the actors to return and not worry about physical appearances in age.

(applause)

Damn right.

 

[FreezeC77]

I have kind of mixed feelings if the animated movie is used to show characters played by actors who have passed away, but then give them a new voice actor or something.

I presume Bruce Boxleitner is in this given he was in a tweeted picture with JMS as a 'teaser' to this news coming and it indicated them working on a project together.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I highly doubt they'll recast any of the characters. I imagine it'll be limited to the remaining cast members...and perhaps a few from Crusade?

 

[David cgc]

As far as casting goes, I remember a bunch of them met for lunch or something and posted about it on their socials, and rumor had it, it was somehow related to this. I was looking for the post to get a better idea of who was involved. And instead I found these tweets from last August.

The great thing is that the secret B5 project isn't one of those "maybe it'll happen/maybe it won't"...it's done, it has a '23 release date, and it's the closest thing to the original B5 in tone of anything we've done since. As if no time has passed at all. 100% crescent fresh.

Done as in done. Finished. And all of the main B5 cast members still around participated. I can't tell you what it is or even what form, because that announcement has to come from others, but I'm very proud of it (and Patrons will, as ever, be first to get the deets.)​

 

[valkyrie013]

Sweet.. Wonder if itll be on HBO max.. Is B5 back on there?

Fir those complaining since its animated..
Im happy we have this since we havent had jack shit for 20 years. ( minus 2007 lost tales)

 

[Hound of UIster]

An animated movie? That's the best they can do? Wow, Hollywood is really getting cheap.

JMS cut his teeth doing cartoons with stuff like He-Man/She-Ra and Ghostbusters. For him, it's a much easier transition since he has previous experience in that area writing for cartoons, which is not the same as live action.

 

[JD]

This is great news, I'm happy to be getting some new B5, and I at this point I think animation is the best way to go about a continuation of the original series. Since there's very little chance of WB giving them a decent bugdet, animation is a great way for them to tale a larger scale story again, and it allows them to set it at pretty much any point in the timeline.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Will be interesting to see how this turns out. Whenever it is.

 

[Mage]

I'm still just mildly curious, nowhere near excited yet. We don't even know if this is being broadcast, streamed, or straight to DVD/blu-ray. And "love letter to the fans"? Isn't that how Berman and Braga described the last episode of Enterprise?

What I found most surprising was that it's already shot and cut and basically ready for release....
You'd think he would have announced this way earlier...

I am optimistic, but hesitantly so. I fear this is going to be not nearly what we hope it could be.

 

[David cgc]

What I found most surprising was that it's already shot and cut and basically ready for release....
You'd think he would have announced this way earlier...

He's been talking about this since last year in veiled terms. Maybe longer, I don't recall off-hand when his first public mention was (hell, we probably talk about it and are all "boy who cried wolf" about it in this very thread, a hundred pages ago). As for the relatively short promo cycle, studios have learned, especially after the lockdowns, that long lead-ups to releases aren't as effective at building hype as they used to. With so much being released all the time, a lot of early trailers and making-ofs while still in production like we used to get is now likely to be buried, and by the time the movie or series is actually released, a lot of people assume it had already come out and they'd missed it, and decide they'll just catch it on streaming if they hear it's any good. That can especially apply to projects like this that have long production cycles and hard release dates (in this case, it's a 30th anniversary tie-in). I remember the last nuBSG spin-off, Blood and Chrome, was done for like a year before we even saw a leaked trailer.

IIRC, either the release or a trailer or something was supposed to coincide with SDCC, which is in July, so a first formal announcement just over two months prior feels like a standard amount of time to get the ball rolling.