"I mean, there’s actually a kind of awe that sets in when you begin to really understand the extent of the stupidity involved...the same kind of stunned, silent reverence that comes when you finally see the Mona Lisa up close, or the first time you hear Ode to Joy performed by a live orchestra. The sheer majestic perfection of it sends you to your knees with the realization that this is not just common stupidity, it’s a Mount Everest rising into the clouds...a level of stupidity so monumental that it actually acquires horizontal perspective, like a train disappearing into the distance."

JMS, Babylon 5 - The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, Volume 3

For the last year, very much under the radar, I've been working with two film makers who have created some of the biggest SF movies in the last twenty years on a television project. (I can't reveal their identities, but pick any three of their movies and you have box office of over two billion dollars.) We've been quietly writing and creating the first three scripts for a new SF series that would pretty much revolutionize the form, and which have gone out to the networks for auction. Offers are coming in. Whether or not the offers are enough to make the project work -- it's huge -- remains to be seen. Where this goes will be determined in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

(JMS, 23.09.2007)

On the TV project I co-wrote and would produce with the two mega-film makers (henceforth just "the group"), we took the first three scripts out to auction in the weeks leading up to the strike. Everybody wanted to be in business with the group given the massive reps of the film-makers (and me, I suppose).

The up-side of the project was that everyone agreed that they had never seen anything like it before. The down-side was that they had never seen anything like it before. This is a business where people are comfortable with what they've seen. Some found it too controversial/weird. Some wanted it and made offers, but only on the condition that we tone it down a bit and make it more conventional. At the eleventh hour, one that had passed turned around to say yes...but by then it was too late and everyone stopped buying things with the strike about to happen.

So the group conferred, and what we'll probably end up doing is financing the project ourselves, first as a ten hour miniseries, and take it from there. There's no question, given the names involved, that we can turn around and get financing from a studio and/or DVD distributer and from worldwide television pre-sales. So when the strike is over, we'll pick up that thread again, write the next 7 episodes, shoot the thing, then sell it to whichever network wants it the most.

This means we won't have to compromise anything creatively, it'll be exactly what we want it to be.

(JMS, 07.12.2007)