Beloved Sci-Fi Series ‘Babylon 5’ Set for Reboot at The CW

Beloved sci-fi series Babylon 5 ended more than two decades ago, and now a reboot of the fan-favorite series is reportedly in development at the CW. According to Variety, J. Michael Straczynski — who created the series —  is attached to script the reboot, as well as serve as an executive producer under his Studio JMS banner. Warner Bros. Television, the studio that produced the original Babylon 5, will also produce the new series. Per Variety, the show will be a “from-the-ground-up reboot,” which may imply that much of the original series will not be relevant to the story, but that is unconfirmed.

Babylon 5 debuted in 1993 with a test pilot movie, and then went on to air on TNT and in syndication for five 22-episode seasons. The show starred Bruce Boxleitner as Captain John Sheridan, an Earth Alliance military leader who becomes stationed on a ship dubbed Babylon 5. Sheridan and his team would face off against intergalactic enemies over the course of the show’s televised chapters, and would occasionally find some allies along the way. In addition to Boxleitner, the show also starred Michael O’Hare, Claudia Christian, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan, Richard Biggs, Andrea Thompson, Bill Mumy, and Jason Carter, among many others. The series also spawned a short-lived spin-off series in 1999, titled Crusade. 

Over the years, Straczynski has worked on a number of other big projects, from movies like Thor and World War Z to the hit Netflix series . However, Babylon 5 has always been his most fan-dedicated project to date. Back in 2020, Straczynski sat down with Games Radar to discuss the show’s legacy and “novel made for television” approach. “The idea of saying ‘This is gonna go five years, and we’re done’ and ‘It’s gonna have the structure of a novel,’ and that we’re building toward a conclusion really had never been done,” he said. “But I’ve always been kind of a contrarian, so when someone tells me, ‘This hasn’t been done’ or ‘This can’t be done,’ my first instinct is to go off and do the damn thing.”

After hitting some brick walls along the journey of getting the series off the ground, the show eventually became a reality, with Straczynski and his production team essentially being able to work with little meddling from the studio. “There was benign neglect that, under other circumstances, let us get away with things that we probably couldn’t have done otherwise,” he said. “So when we showed we could do exactly what we said we could do, they ignored us.After season 2 episode 2, they stopped giving us notes. We were kinda left to our own devices, and that was the good thing about it.” If the Babylon 5 reboot does eventually land at The CW, it won’t be the network’s only reboot, as the recent Walker, Texas Ranger series has been a hit with CW audiences.