Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (1 Viewer)

[Joseph DeMartino]

Not after the middle of the 2nd season. Except for one S5 script ("Day of the Dead" by Neil Gaiman) JMS wrote every episode of the 3rd, 4th and 5th seasons.

In any case, he's going to want to oversee any future LTs, at least as Executive Producer, and probably as de facto story editor, and that's hard to do when you're in London shooting a TV pilot and WB is prepping the next LT segment in Toronto. Even he turns the writing on LT over to someone else his existing writing commitments are going to leave him no time to wear any of his other hats on the project - and he's not going to let anything go out under the B5 name that he doesn't control. (Why should he at this point? He's an "A" list writer now. )

BTW, the list of projects mentioned above doesn't even include his comic book work, and several other movie and TV things only hinted at thus far. (Including a "near-legendary" SF property being prepped for the big screen.) Also he said to keep an eye out for some kind of announcement in the June 19th edition of Daily Variety.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Sam Favate]

Sounds like we're never going to get that B5 feature movie. It's been 10 years since the show ended, and two cast members are already gone. It's a damn shame - it could have been a great movie series.

 

[todd s]

Joe, What are the rumors as to what the SF property is?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Less rumor than speculation - various people have attempted to do a remake of Forbidden Planet over the years, and supposedly there is another underway now. JMS would certainly be a logical candidate for that - and it matches his description of "near legendary".

Two other adaptations that would qualify - although I don't know if anyone is actually working on them - would be The Foundation Trilogy and Stranger in a Strange Land, both classics that have been optioned over and over again without anyone ever having found a way to make them work. (Not that this always stops Hollywood from making the movies - witness the recent Will Smith misfires I, Robot and I am Legend.)

Most intriguing is the report that JMS's new pal Ron Howard has acquired the rights to "Doc" Smith's Lensmen novels. Given that Smith's space opera epic was one of the inspirations for B5, and that he is one of the few writers who could bring the story to the screen with the scope and energy of the original - but without the campy excess - this sounds pretty cool to me. I'm looking forward to the 19th.

Regards,

Joe

 

[JediFonger]

the nature of SF is that it is vast and virtually unlimited in scope in what u can tell. even B5 itself had significant changes of the main casts during its 5 year run =P. so i don't think a feature has to have EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. u can even have a B5 without any of them, make the story take place in the universe.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

All of which is true, but JMS wants as many of the original actors as possible.. He's always said that the main reason he wanted to do a feature film is to reward the actors with the big payday and recognition that only a feature film can bring. It is true that they don't all have to be in it. The abortive indie film, Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows was going to focus largely on some new characters and feature only a few of the characters from the original series and Crusade. Because some brand-new indie producers had optioned the rights from JMS he saw the film as a kind of "toe in the water" way of bringing B5 to the big screen and therefore wrote a smaller, "disposable" story for them. Presumably if the film were made and did well they'd do a sequel that was more along the lines of what he'd always intended.

The film, of course, didn't get made, because the producers couldn't raise enough money and JMS declined to given them a second free extension on their option. Here's the interesting part: Just before the project was dropped, JMS and the producers approached Warner Bros. about a co-financing/distribution deal. WB was interested, but they had a condition: They wanted to replace the TV actors with "name" film actors in all the B5 and Crusade roles. Rather than do this, JMS let the project quietly die. That should give you an idea of how seriously he takes the idea of getting the original actors into any feature film.

Look, it has always been the case, and is especially the case now, that JMS doesn't need a B5 movie. He has plenty to keep him busy and he's making lots of money - more these days than he ever dreamt about, I'm sure. The main B5 story was told on TV, the DVDs are on the shelf and that project is over. If he wants to play in the B5 universe, there's always The Lost Tales. So the only way he'd take the better part of three years out of his life to write and produce (and (maybe direct) a B5 feature is if it is the feature he's been making in his head for the past 20 years.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Sam Favate]

And that's exactly the feature that fans want to see. I hope he gets to make it.

I watched the first episode of Season 2 last night. My wife and I are watching the show from start to finish, and she's never seen it before. She's been a big fan of Lost for several years and is impressed by how B5 pioneered a lot of that storytelling for TV (the serialized story, the flashbacks, major characters moving on, coming in, etc.). So B5 has been very much on my mind lately.

I'm glad to see JMS so busy. But with every new project of his that I read about, I think "Oh no! Another obstacle to a B5 movie!" Nonetheless, I am interested to see his new films, and glad he's having such mainstream success. I can think of few who deserve it more.

 

[JediFonger]

i wish there was a current popular film director that has cloud and power, like say a spielberg or even a jon favreau who has had a recent success and is a huge fan of B5. then they sign on to direct . that ought to make that film possible . *sigh* fantasies of a B5 fan i guess =P.

before B5 and Twin Peaks, were there other TV series that were written like this?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Well, it kinda depends on what you mean by "TV series". The Brits tend to do short form series, anywhere from 6 to 18 episodes, often adapations of literature, that have clear story arcs and definite endings. Many of them turned up on PBS as Masterpiece Theater selections, and the best of them generated sequels. Soap operas, of course, employ continuing storylines, but they tend to be more open-ended with a single story spanning several seasons, while subsidiary stories may last only a season or a portion of a season.

In American primetime there hasn't been much in the way of serialized story telling, and nothing comparable to the five-year epic of B5. There were shows with premises that had built-in endpoints, like The Fugitive or The Guns of Will Sonnett, but week-by-week they were told in self-contained episodes that rarely built on one another. Only the finale (in the case of The Fugitive, Will Sonnett was cancelled before it got that far) actually advanced the "main" story.

Twin Peaks is a different case, because it lacked two things that B5 had - a firm conclusion that it was moving toward and a firm end date. I think some of the early story threads were planned out, but at a certain point they just started winging it and it showed. Closet in spirit to what B5 did was Wiseguy. There the lead character took different undercover assignments, each of which was an arc unto itself, and which would run for varying lengths, each with a definite beginning, middle and end that were planned from the start. None of those arcs went as long as a full season, IIRC.

X-Files was, of course, another show with a continuing narrative, but no true "arc" that was planned out in advance. The "make it up as you go" approach eventually produced a mythology so dense and even self-contradictory that even hardcore fans got tired of the series and it limped along like many shows, staying on the air just that year or two longer than it should have, when the ratings caught up with it. Better by far to go out on top with the audience wanting more than over-staying your welcome. One of these days the industry may figure that out.

But B5 was really the first (and so far really only) show to be designed like a series of book, with each season correpsonding to a volume in the series and everything outlined to make the overall narrative work. (While still leaving room for adapatation to real world changes.) It is notable that what is literally the central crisis of the series - B5's break from Earth and declaration of independence - takes place over three episodes in the middle of season 3 - virtually the exact mid-point of the entire series. Even Lost wasn't able to do anything that precise, because the network initially balked at establishing a fixed end-point for the show, wanting the option to stretch things out for as long as the ratings held-up - which put the writers in an impossible situation.

Regards,

Joe

 

[JediFonger]

B5=very unique, but still under-watched. i think if u randomly ask anyone on the streets today, they will have heard of lost (at the very least) but won't have a clue about B5.

the prisoner (british i know) did that in the 60s didn't they? but it was pretty much a one-off like many of the things they did.

how about 24?

 

[Sam Favate]

Well, then that's their loss. As I said in this thread, I am currently rewatching B5 (in season 2 now) and I am continually impressed at - among other things - how well thought-out it all was. Sure, there is some teasing of what is to come but you don't wait years for the payoff (hello, X-Files) and then get disappointed. Watching the DVDs on a Blu-Ray player, I can see that the video transfers left a bit to be desired in places (not everywhere, some of it looks nice), but that's a quibble.

Saw a nice quote from JMS after his experience at Cannes, where his Changeling film was screened (starring Angelina Jolie, directed by Clint Eastwood; big time, JMS!). He said that for him, the fairy tale had come true and he was at peace. I was very gratified to read his comments. Too often, talent like his does not get rewarded. He deserves his success.

As for the Prisoner, I read that the AMC remake is underway and should be coming to TV next year.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

The economics of British TV, the number of stations, even the size of the country all made it a very different kettle of fish from American TV, so it is hard to compare them.

While the events of each season are incorporated into the following season, there is no indication that 24 ever had a per-planned multi-season arc. Obviously each one-day, one-season arc is meticulously planned out, but again, doing a season (or part of a season) at a time is a lot easier than doing a five-year story with both an overall arc and several subsidiary stories that begin and end at different points along the way. 24 is more like a series of short stories with the same set of characters, each self-contained even while they refer back to events that happened in earlier stories. You don't have to have seen the previous seasons of 24 to watch the current one.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Variety has a nice write-up naming JMS one of its "10 Screenwriters to Watch" - and confirming that he's doing Lensman for Ron Howard - presumably the "near legendary SF project" he alluded to earlier.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Sam Favate]

Is that the announcement JMS alluded to for June 19 in Variety? Once again, glad to hear he is so busy, but hoping for more B5.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Yup, that was it. I don't think he'll need to play coy about any future B5 news. I'm sure WB will greenlight another Lost Tale just as soon as he's ready to do one, and generally the only reason for not spilling the details about something is that there's an embargo of one kind or another that prevents JMS from making an announcement until the news is officially announced by another party - Variety in the case of the article, the studio or network in the case of a film or TV project.

Regards,

Joe

 

[oscar_merkx]

Thanks for the link to that update.

It makes you wonder with all that he has achieved, that he is unable to make progress on B5.

Just noticed that he is writing Ninja Assassin for the Wachowskis and Joel Silver. Now that should be really interesting

 

[Sam Favate]

Joe could probably say better than I could, but it seems to me the only thing stopping him from turning attention to B5 these days is a lack of time, and perhaps a wealth of other stories he wants to tell.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

You're absolutely right. He's suddenly hugely in demand and one thing no freelance writer ever does is turn down an assignment if he can avoid it - because you never know when a hot streak will end. Plus he's now able to pitch ideas and get scripts and treatments directly to the Ron Howards and Clint Eastwoods of the world without having to work his way all the way up the studio food chain, which means that some projects that got passed over before might now get a second look.

Add in the fact that most of his current work pays a heck of a lot more than anything B5-related ever would and you can see why he'd be concentrating on that rather than B5, much as he still clearly loves the show. (Look at all the time he did devote to the script books over the past couple of years, including locking himself away long enough to hand-autograph every single copy of the bonus Volume 15 that went out.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Bit off-topic, but regarding 24, I'm pretty sure even the writers now acknowledge that they just make each day up as they go along. (Something I suspected ever since the identity of the mole was revealed at the end of day 1 - go back and check, and you'll find that person is supposed to commit a murder in an earlier episode, but there was no time to do it.) I love 24, it's a great ride, but an example of a carefully-planned story it is not.

 

[oscar_merkx]

Thanks for the reply Joe