The CW’s Babylon 5 pilot, originally in contention for the 2022-2023 TV season, has been pushed to next season’s development, creator J. Michael Straczynski has confirmed on his Patreon website.
Stracyznski pointed out that conversations were made about how many pilots would be ordered at the time of the network’s possible sale, and then of course, today, news came down about pilots Gotham Knights, The Winchesters, and Walker: Independence going forward, without Babylon 5 on that list.
“When a pilot script is not picked up to production, 99.999% of the time, that’s the end of the road for the project, the script is dead,” he continues, though some good news did come on JMS’ end.
“Shortly before that piece was published, I received a call from Mark Pedowitz, President of The CW. (I should mention that Mark is a great guy and a long-time fan of B5. He worked for Warners when the show was first airing, and always made sure we got him copies of the episodes before they aired because he didn’t want to wait to see what happened next.),” Straczynski wrote. “Calling the pilot “a damned fine script,” he said he was taking the highly unusual step of rolling the project and the pilot script into next year, keeping B5 in active development while the dust settles on the sale of the CW.”
With that said, according to the writer, Babylon 5 is in active development at the CW and Warner Bros. for Fall 2023. You can see J. Michael Straczynski’s Patreon post here.
