B5 Feature Film to be scriptedTRUE! There will be a feature film going into productio

[Lyta's Shadow]

If this new movie or series of movies violates what has gone on before, then I will be unhappy. Until we have more details let's not assume the worst.

I am still not entirely enamoured with the new Trek films, the whole "sweeping the board clean" approach is on some level quite disrespectful, especially when the movies themselves don't necessarily use that to tell fresh stories but only rehash old plots. But that's another discussion!

JMS is the one behind this production so I am sure no-one would be more interested in protecting what has gone on before than him.

 

[Jan]

Rebooting it for a movie, though? This seems misguided. Compressing 110 hours of story into 6 hours of screen time told over the course of 6 years or so. I dunno, I read that and I feel something break inside me, and I think it might just be one revival attempt too far.

Where did you get the 6 hours of screen time over the course of 6 years or so? It's certainly nothing JMS has said in the past several years.

Why not just see what he does? And for those who're interested, I've transcribed the relevant portions of JMS' spotlight panel where he made the announcement.

http://jmsnews.com/forums/showpost.php?p=122835&postcount=129

Jan

 

[hypatia]

Is this some kind of brilliantly timed, nerd-focussed April Fool's day joke? :wtf:

It took me 15 years to give up hoping for more Babylon 5. Was THAT the secret to getting it back? :rommie::thumbsup:

Yipeeeeeeeeeee. If it turns out to be true.

Phooooey. If it's not. :scream:

 

[ranger phil]

oh it's true alright.

interesting to see how he handles it. will he tackle one of the major story arcs, or one of the minor ones? How's he going to mix it up? with more money he can do all the things he wants without having to worry about restrictions. so much scope for a brilliant movie.

 

[Psi Cop]

Is this some kind of brilliantly timed, nerd-focussed April Fool's day joke? :wtf:

It took me 15 years to give up hoping for more Babylon 5. Was THAT the secret to getting it back? :rommie::thumbsup:

Yipeeeeeeeeeee. If it turns out to be true.

Phooooey. If it's not. :scream:

I agree 150,000%

 

[JonFrain]

oh it's true alright.

interesting to see how he handles it. will he tackle one of the major story arcs, or one of the minor ones? How's he going to mix it up? with more money he can do all the things he wants without having to worry about restrictions. so much scope for a brilliant movie.

Seems like no matter what he does it would have to be geared as the beginning of a series and ending with a cliffhanger.

I'm actually quite baffled at how he can reboot with a standalone film. Focusing on a Station was a great idea for a budget conscious TV show, but seems limiting in terms of a film.

It's really too bad that they never got funded for the TV show reboot. My hope would be for WB to find a distributor for a TV reboot and get JMS to cancel the film.

 

[JonFrain]

Rebooting it for a movie, though? This seems misguided. Compressing 110 hours of story into 6 hours of screen time told over the course of 6 years or so. I dunno, I read that and I feel something break inside me, and I think it might just be one revival attempt too far.

Where did you get the 6 hours of screen time over the course of 6 years or so? It's certainly nothing JMS has said in the past several years.

Why not just see what he does? And for those who're interested, I've transcribed the relevant portions of JMS' spotlight panel where he made the announcement.

http://jmsnews.com/forums/showpost.php?p=122835&postcount=129

Jan

Thanks for the link. I'm impressed that he wouldn't use crowd sourcing as a source of funding. There are only two properties I'd consider helping to fund in such a way and that's B5 and Farscape either for TV/Film/Game. So maybe he'll reconsider at some point as fans really do want to feel like they can help resurrect a beloved property.

Tons of shows have done the character switch that he refers to. Farscape did it well. WB sure is a mess.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

It's in the "Echoes of all our conversations" interview books. Bill Mumy August 5th 1997:

When I read that Lennier was toasted as one who had fallen [in Sleeping in Light], at first I tried to appeal that. I went to Joe and said, "Does he have to die?" and Joe said, "He dies in the great telepath war. He'll die like a hero, and it's way down the line; it's two movies down the line." I said, "Yeah, but he has to die?" and Joe said, "Yes, he's dying. He'll die like a hero and it will be great death, and it's after the fifth season" and blah blah blah.

That's Lennier's fate: he dies in the great telepath war somewhere down the line in the future.

Fair enough, that does seem to indicate that by the time of season four, the telepath war was not meant to be in the series, if it ever was. I do feel that is a shame, but never mind.

I don't claim to know Joe's mind, but I know a lot of writers, and I'm an amateur myself. Regardless of the original plan (Which was the 10-year B5/BP arc in this case), things slide around a lot. You paint yourself into a corner, or a better idea appears, or you get an unrelated moment of inspiration that changes the whole thing or - frequently - ugly, stupid reality kicks in.

In this case, I think it was ugly stupid reality. I honestly believe the Telepath arc was intended to be *INSIDE* B5 (or B5/BP) all along. Then we get into season 4, and it becomes increasingly obvious that they're not going to get a season 5. So JMS has to start brutally choosing what he's going to keep and what he simply doesn't have room for. For instance, remember how the middle part of S4 was set up to revolve around Clarke's four plans to subvert and retake the station? And then that was just dropped, and we switched to the war to retake earth? Yeah. Those *HAD* to be resolved. Stuff with the Drakh and Telepath hadn't really gotten going yet, so he dropped it.

When he DID get a 5th season, I suspect he tried to fill it in with leftover stuff, but for a variety of reasons it didn't work. I have theories on these reasons as well.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

If this new movie or series of movies violates what has gone on before, then I will be unhappy. Until we have more details let's not assume the worst.

I am still not entirely enamoured with the new Trek films, the whole "sweeping the board clean" approach is on some level quite disrespectful, especially when the movies themselves don't necessarily use that to tell fresh stories but only rehash old plots. But that's another discussion!

JMS is the one behind this production so I am sure no-one would be more interested in protecting what has gone on before than him.

Actually, JMS was the first one to suggest the whole "Wiping the Trek-slate clean" thing with paramount. Paramount rejected the idea out of hand.

I actually like the "Old characters, new destinies" idea, and didn't hate the 2nd one the way I figured it was. It was pitched as a remake (needless) of Wrath of Khan, but it really wasn't. If it was a remake of anything, it was "Space Seed."

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Rebooting it for a movie, though? This seems misguided. Compressing 110 hours of story into 6 hours of screen time told over the course of 6 years or so. I dunno, I read that and I feel something break inside me, and I think it might just be one revival attempt too far.

Where did you get the 6 hours of screen time over the course of 6 years or so? It's certainly nothing JMS has said in the past several years.

Why not just see what he does? And for those who're interested, I've transcribed the relevant portions of JMS' spotlight panel where he made the announcement.

http://jmsnews.com/forums/showpost.php?p=122835&postcount=129

Jan

Realistically speaking, with the full force of a major studio behind it, it takes about three years to make a major effects picture. There's about 3 years between Bond films, Star Wars films, etc. Writing, preproduction, casting, production, editing, scoring, merchandising, it's involved. 3 years is about the average. You can step that up a bit as Warners did with Harry Potter, or New Line did with LOTR, but in both cases the studios nearly killed themselves.

So let's say B5: The Movie comes out in 2016. Realistically, you're not going to see B5:II: Armed and Fabulous until 2019, and B53: Electric Boogaloo until 2022. It's just the state of the industry. There's actually 9 years of production in there, but from an audience point of view, the clock starts with the first film, so it's 6 years to us.

As to the run time of movies? Standard length is 2 hours. Comedies generally run 90 minutes. Epics run 150 to 180 minutes, but studios and theaters don't like to do epics if they can avoid it (Apart from a brief trend some years back) because they can't show a movie as many times in a day, and hence don't make as much money off of it.

So my whole surmise was based on the more-or-less standard model of movie economics.

 

[Jan]

Sorry, my question wasn't clear Why are you assuming a trilogy of movies in the first place?

Jan

 

[JonFrain]

How could it not be the first of a series of films?

Part of me thinks the best starting point is the time period covered by "In the Beginning" but purely from the humans point of view with Sinclair as a key role and ending with Sinclair being returned, the war over and several years later Sinclair taking helm of B5. Leave the Minbari a complete mystery and no Vorlons.


A second film could pick up with Sinclair taking over B5. But the exact plot to cover in just that film is very tricky. I think they'd have to maybe take plot points from "And the Sky Full of Stars", "Signs and Portents" and "Chrysalis" but with the focus on corruption in the earth government, people trying to discover what Sinclair knows and the assassination of the current earth president. The Shadows and Vorlons would be introduced but only as a tease.

In the end I just have a hard time seeing how Joe can shrink the huge plot down into a movie. I think the Londo/G'Kar and PsiCorp storylines would take a HUGE hit

 

[Jan]

I found a copy of a post of JMS' from back when the proposed TV series had dead-ended back in 2011. Don't know if this will help assuage people's fears or not but it's probably still applicable today.:

Despite what some folks say, the fact is that saying "reboot" is like saying "science fiction," it means what you're pointing at, and there are all kinds of permutations of what that means. It (and remember we're talking about something that is not currently on the boards) can't be a straight-ahead sequel because the market can't sustain it when the show hasn't been on the air in the US in over a decade. That's never, ever going to fly. It can't be called Babylon 5 if there isn't a place called Babylon 5, so the station has to be in existence, otherwise you can't use that name. You could do a show about the telepath war, but you couldn't call it Babylon 5 unless there's a Babylon 5 there, otherwise it'll confuse the hell out of new audiences (oh, that's named for a station that used to be there in another series you never saw).

The challenge I set for myself in this is very simple: knowing what I know now, having grown a lot as a writer since 1992 (or for that matter the late 80s when I started writing the pilot), having the experience of the original show in what worked and what didn't, and with all the technology available to us now that wasn't there in 1992, if I were to put the show together right now, what would it look like? That, for my money, is what a reboot is.

Jan

 

[hypatia]

Thanks for sharing that, Jan.

And for my two cents: I don't mind a bit when t.v. and movies use familiar actors in different roles. It allows us to appreciate a different characterization, and can be quite good. They are, after all, actors not characters.

All I ask of any of my entertainment is that it have interesting characters that I can enjoy, and good writing. Orphan Black gave me faith that modern science fiction can be excellent.

I hope that's a good sign for this project. Maybe people are itching for a bit more cerebral science fiction than "Zombie Thor Clan, the Crunchables!", or whatever it is these days.

(Not that some of the superhero and zombie films can't be good. We do have an awful lot of them, lately, that's all.)

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Sorry, my question wasn't clear Why are you assuming a trilogy of movies in the first place?

Jan

Why wouldn't you assume a trilogy? Everything is trilogies. It's the best compromise between amortizing development costs and guranteeing a reasonably stable income. I mean, there's one reason "Hobbit" was three movies instead of one, and it's got nothing to do with integrity.

Besides, rebootig B5 presumably entails retelling its story, right? So compressing 110 episodes into 360 minutees (At one ep every 3.2 minutes!) has got to be easier than compressing 110 episodes in 120 minutes (at 1 ep every 1.09 minutes!) I'm being a bit facetious, obviously, but you get my point: Lot of story, not a lot of screen time.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

How could it not be the first of a series of films?

Part of me thinks the best starting point is the time period covered by "In the Beginning" but purely from the humans point of view with Sinclair as a key role and ending with Sinclair being returned, the war over and several years later Sinclair taking helm of B5. Leave the Minbari a complete mystery and no Vorlons.


A second film could pick up with Sinclair taking over B5. But the exact plot to cover in just that film is very tricky. I think they'd have to maybe take plot points from "And the Sky Full of Stars", "Signs and Portents" and "Chrysalis" but with the focus on corruption in the earth government, people trying to discover what Sinclair knows and the assassination of the current earth president. The Shadows and Vorlons would be introduced but only as a tease.

In the end I just have a hard time seeing how Joe can shrink the huge plot down into a movie. I think the Londo/G'Kar and PsiCorp storylines would take a HUGE hit

The best examples of this I've seen are both Japanese. The 36-episode series "Macross" eventually produced a feature-length movie that was essentially a retelling of the entire TV series, but with significant departures (Including new uniforms, some redesigned characters, a lot of new equipment, somewhat re-imagined enemies, etc) Some die who didn't die before, some live who didn't before, and some simply don't exist in this world at all. Taken on its own, it was a very good movie, and a lot of fun.

It later turned out that the gag was this: The TV series was what actually happened, and the movie was a big dumb Hollywood blockbuster ABOUT what happened made 30 years after the fact. The movie was to reality what a World War II movie was to the real war.

(In the unanticipated spinoff series, Macross 7, one of the characters is a much older guy from the original series who is talking to someone who basically only knows of him from watching the movie. With some embarasment he says, "Yes, I've seen it. It wasn't very realistic.")

The other good one was the recent "Space Battleship Yamato," which basically compressed the entire original Star Blazers season (ANd some bits from season 2) into one movie, took a ton of liberties (Some very ballsy), but still managed to hold true to everything that was important in the original. Not a very accurate reboot, but spiritually it was dead on target.

 

[Republibot 3.0]

Thanks for sharing that, Jan.

And for my two cents: I don't mind a bit when t.v. and movies use familiar actors in different roles. It allows us to appreciate a different characterization, and can be quite good. They are, after all, actors not characters.

All I ask of any of my entertainment is that it have interesting characters that I can enjoy, and good writing. Orphan Black gave me faith that modern science fiction can be excellent.

I hope that's a good sign for this project. Maybe people are itching for a bit more cerebral science fiction than "Zombie Thor Clan, the Crunchables!", or whatever it is these days.

(Not that some of the superhero and zombie films can't be good. We do have an awful lot of them, lately, that's all.)

I have reservations, not damnations. If it gets made, I'll be there to see it on day 1, showing 1, and if it's good, I'll be happy and see it again and tell everyone. And if it sucks, I won't do those latter things.

What else can anyone reasonably ask of me?

 

[hypatia]

I certainly hope it actually does make it to the big screen.

I can't help but wonder, what comes next? (What could go wrong, as well?)

 

[KoshN]

Sorry, my question wasn't clear Why are you assuming a trilogy of movies in the first place?

Jan

Why wouldn't you assume a trilogy?

We'll be damned lucky to get ONE two-hour movie.

 

[ranger phil]

Sorry, my question wasn't clear Why are you assuming a trilogy of movies in the first place?

Jan

Why wouldn't you assume a trilogy?

We'll be damned lucky to get ONE two-hour movie.

exactly.