Babylon 5 Animated Movie Announced By Creator J. Michael Straczynski

J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, has announced on Twitter that an animated movie based on the original show is in the works. The movie is being produced by Warner Bros. Animation and WB Home Entertainment, and Straczynski promises that it will be “raucous, heartfelt, nonstop, a ton of fun through time and space & a love letter to the fans.”

According to Straczynski, the film is already finished and ready for release. He added that it is the most “B5-ish of anything [the team] has done since the original show.” Details about the movie’s title, release date, and other particulars will be on May 10.

Babylon 5 ran for five seasons, 110 episodes, and seven TV movies, including the pilot film, and won many awards, including two Hugo Awards and a Saturn Award. The show was set on Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station located in neutral space, which served as a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers, and alien diplomats during a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war.

The original cast of the series included Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Jerry Doyle, Mira Furlan, and Richard Briggs. Straczynski followed up the show with the TNT spinoff series Crusade. The Babylon 5 franchise also includes novels, short stories, and comic books.

While a reboot of the series was announced in 2021 as being in development at The CW, there have been no updates on the project since then. Straczynski’s other notable works include the Netflix series Sense8, which he co-created and showran along with the Wachowskis, and his feature writing credits include Changeling, Ninja Assassin, the story for the first Thor film, and the story for World War Z. He is also an accomplished comic book writer, having worked for DC and Marvel.