MESSAGE FROM JMS:

When asked what can be done to save Crusade, jms replied:

"What you have to understand at this point is that there's really no time left. It takes a large amount of money to hold a cast and crew together while other options are being sought, and even then options on varoius cast members and others begin to expire fast."

"WB can't keep spending holding money while they're seeking another prospect. It's a business decision, but a sensible one, given the large amounts of money involved. Their approach now is to believe in the show enough to get it on the air, let the ratings speak for themselves, and see what happens."

"My only regret is for the cast, who are all uniformly terrific, and who are caught out in all this."

-jms

CRUSADE IS DEAD?

JMS has stated that the SciFi channel could not afford to buy Crusade and that it has now been dropped. The 13 episodes that already have been made will still air on TNT though:

"Well, we took our best shot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't."

"The SciFi Channel programming guys wanted the show; they wanted it a lot. They crunched numbers for almost two weeks trying to make it work. But at the end of the day, the problem was that they had already allocated or spent their budget for the year, and couldn't come up with the huge chunk of change necessary to get an entire season. Had this come up prior to January 1st, things would almost certainly have gone differently. But they have their budget, as we have ours, and it was already allocated."

"So TNT will now air the full 13 produced, and that's the end of it for now. I say for now because WB has told us to fold and hold all the sets, rather than scrap them, because they believe strongly in the show, and feel that when the ratings come in we may well be able to pick up a second season. We'll see."

"Meanwhile, I'm taking the day off, and deciding which of a number of offers from networks and studios, sitting on my desk since B5 finished, to pick up. I had declined to go that route so I could do Crusade and keep playing in this universe, but absent that, there's no reason not to go back to the networks and apply there some of what we've been able to do in B5 and Crusade."

"My thanks to all those who wrote, and called, and emailed, and lent their support to the process. And I think that when you see the show, you'll be quite pleased by what we did. We're all very proud of it."

jms

BAD NEWS FOR THE STARFURY GAME:

Yosemite, the company making the B5 sim, has been shut down by Sierra, the B5 game has been postponed until at least 2000, and development will move to Seattle with only a few of the original developers left...

Here are some posts on the b5games.com message board that might cast some light on the situation. These are mostly posts by ex/current employees:

http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/pe/5527.htm
http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/fc/5465.htm
http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/nk/5681.htm
http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/pz/5397.htm
http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/sc/5478.htm
http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/pw/5319.htm
http://marcus.sierra.com/forums/babylon5/posts/iz/5390.htm

NEWS FROM THE AICN SITE:

Two news reports from the "Ain't it Cool News" site:

1. Crusade is likely to be "picked up" (i.e. changing networks and able to resume production after a long state-of-suspension at TNT) sometime this week - with production on the series beginning again sometime next week.

2. Now come indications that Babylon 5 will actually be changing networks along with Crusade.

CRUSADE TITLE SEQUENCE PICTURES AT THE AICN SITE:

At the Ain't It Cool News site they have several images >from Crusade's title sequence and they also explain what happens in the sequence as well. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't go there.

You can go directly to the report here.

NEWS FROM JMS:

"WB Network is out of the question, due to the way WB is structured. It's a very long, corporate story, just take my word for it...SFC is the best option for us." -- jms