Try $3 million, not $3 million to $5 million. $3 million is what WB offered for the second DVD and JMS turned 'em down. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .It was Warner Brothers fault for not allowing an adequate budget to make up for the problems that THEY CREATED.
We actually see eye to eye on a lot of things (believe it or not ; ). That warping thing & levels of destruction idea did jump out a bit, as did the whole attack the only race/power that ever stopped the Centauri in the past! ! ! ! ! Eh, when the f*ck did Earth do that – though I admit I’ve not read any of the books/comics so maybe something happened in them.
Maybe it’s my cynical and suspicious nature but here’s where we come at it from pretty different angles. How do you know Warner was being cheap and intransigent. To quote the man, “you weren’t in the room”, mind you neither was I.
Your right in that they’d produce the thing for as low an amount as they could, and there’s no denying that sci-fi fans (and B5 ones in particular) are among the more exploited groups around in television land – the opinion seems to be, as an obsessed minority bunch, we’ll accept any shit that’s passed under our noses and will be thankful for it.
I mentioned 3 to 5 million an “episode”. You say it’s the lower number, but what are you basing that definitive statement on? What jms has said? This is going to look really anal, but remember I did put that site together and was doing a fair bit of research at the time. So have opinions on things I normally wouldn’t care a flying fig about.
For example. For years folks believed and argued (quite fervently) that FI left B5 in the lurch to go join Trek. But you now know that’s bollocks after jms’s podcast interview – they were pushed out after NDI put a team together to show they could do the fx cheaper. But why did some folks believe FI just upped and left, or that Paramount nicked them – and argue the point. . . . . . . . Because jms provided some ambiguous and rather vague replies full of emotion and rhetoric but low on useful facts, and they interpreted them that way, and promptly repeated the assumptions widely as a fact, and a new Urban Legend was born. So much so that when FI and folks working on Voyager etc. unambiguously addressed the issue they were basically accused of being liars. Even as a newbie approaching things from a neutral corner it looked rather strange.
The same thing is kind of happening with TLT. Take the wiki article on it.
The budget for the first disc was two million dollars.[2]
On July 13, 2008, Straczynski revealed that he had no plans to continue The Lost Tales. He said that although the studio was interested in another disc, they wanted to budget the next installment similarly to the first.
But he didn’t mention any figures on the newsgroup when first breaking the news of his decision, other than the ORIGINAL 2 million budget – he left out the detail of what Warner were proposing for future instalments, instead using the term “minimal investment”. But on the wiki article it only mentions the orignal 2 million and states subsequent installments would be budgeted similarly. Maybe it’s just me, but that does suggest a budget for the next ones – something which jms has NEVER unambgiously stated . . . . anywhere.
B5:TLT was commissioned at a $2 million budget to, yet one more time,
"test the waters" for B5. . . . . . . Of late, there have been more discussions from WB about doing more DVDs, again at a low cost, or a cable thing, again with minimal investment.
Kind of leaves things to the readers imagination somewhat - again. Providing partial information is often worse than providing none at all. But a little later he did put a little more meat onto the bones of his earlier comments. I’ve read him mention both 3 million and 3.5 million, and as it turns out he HAS mentioned a figure as high as 5 million.
I hope jan forgives me for using this one but she reported back from a con in 2008 which included this quote from jms relating to TLT was amongst it.
You want to do another one for two, maybe five million and I say, "You know what? No." The fans of Babylon 5 have stood with the show for so long and when you have me write stuff with financial handcuffs on, it leads you to having creative handcuffs on. You can't have extras, you can't have fights, you can't have stunts, you can't have a lot of stuff. [unintelligible] You know what? I've got a lot of movies going giving me a certain credibility there...I'm gonna roll the dice. I told Warner's: "Big budget feature film or nothing." I own the movie rights...[applause]
When someone on here (B5TV) mentioned that 5 million seemed plenty jan replied with this.
From what I could tell, there was no firm offer of $5 million for a second disk. From the way JMS told it, there was a *range* mentioned but no actual offer or negotiations took place.
See where I’m going with this. jms (while still keeping things vague) mentions a 2 (original budget) to 5 million figure from Warner, but it’s then assumed (by a fan) it was not a definite offer and it was assumed (by a fan) that a range of figures was mentioned and it is assumed (by a fan) that no negotiations took place. Nothing wrong with assuming of course (much like the FI/Netter thing). With others (over time) to then accept or repeat those assumptions as facts a very skewed view of things can be created. Can lead to all sorts of nasties. ; )
Plus this whole thing doesn’t even touch on the “financial handcuffs” equates to “creative handcuffs”, which is the basis of the refusal to do any more. A few arguments (and examples) could be used to show that a big budget isn’t required to write a good (and watchable) 30 minute story. To be honest I was a little surprised that this subject has never been really discussed in forums such as this.
Anyway, this is going further and further off topic. The bottom line to this is that the whole thing ground to a halt because jms didn’t want to do anymore, and personally I view that as a bit of a shame. His decision of course, but nevertheless (as someone who did enjoy the show) it’s a bit of a bugger that no other writer(s) – for whatever reasons – aren’t doing more. And to lay the reason firmly and solely at Warners feet based on cherry picking phrases from ambiguous replies from one person (who incidentally holds the movie rights AND can veto any future B5 television production) is . . . . . . . . . well if you genuinely can’t see the potential problems (though personally I do believe your intelligent enough to do so) there’s probably no point laying them out.
I’m actually not saying shit like this to look for a fight or ‘bash’ jms, I don’t think he’s doing anything wrong, (though there was time I did enjoy a good debate – with quotable references), but reading through a few things relating to B5 I can’t get a certain quote from Jossie Wells out my head. Namely “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”. Mucking around with the fans, for whatever reasons, can come in all shapes, sizes and sources. ; )
