Babylon 5- The Lost Tales *SPOILERS*

[Garibaldi's Hair]

There is definitely scope for some TLT stuff about the telepath crisi just based on what we know already. For example, we got a hint of the crisis through Matheson's eyes in Crusade (can't remember which ep it was off off the top of my head), and I imagine it would be fairly straightforward to do a Matheson story set during this period.

Or one based around Bester.

However, I expect that the first three will focus on some of the main characters from B5 ... I would be hugely surprised if Sheridan or Garibaldi (or maybe both) aren't featured in the first run.

[Towelmaster]

To be honest? I don't care what the stories will be about as long as it's B5... JMS can do an episode about Garibaldi's Hair for all I care!

[Garibaldi's Hair]

Sounds good to me.

* goes and sits by the telephone ...

[Milkman]

Sounds good to me.

* goes and sits by the telephone ...

LOL

I knew that was coming...

[Garibaldi's Hair]

Well, I'd hate to disappoint ...

[moreorless]

I guess the conversation has moved beyond this now but I'm personally looking forward to TLT more than I would a theatrical film or a new series. Direct to DVD/Video might have had a certain stigma attacted to it in the past but right now I'd say its the best route to take if we want to see something truely in the spirit of the original series and directly related to it. A film and to a lesser degree a TV series are always going to be worrying about bringing in the general audience but when your charging say $15 for a DVD release you only need the real fans so you can make something aimed soley at them.

[ljg702]

xA film and to a lesser degree a TV series are always going to be worrying about bringing in the general audience but when your charging say $15 for a DVD release you only need the real fans so you can make something aimed soley at them.

Using JMS' quote of half a billion dollars worth of DVD sales, that would equate to something like 1.5 million people buying each of the series box sets. If WB changes $15 dollars for each B5:TLT disc, assuming each person who bought a box set buys each TLT DVD, WB can expect over $20 million in revenue per DVD. Assuming that the budget per TLT disc is about the same as the TV movies approx $3 million if I remember, I would think that WB should be quite happy with the piles of gold heading their way. I think each TLT disc would break even at sales of a few hundred thousand. This assumes that no network pays to broadcast it.

On the other side of the coin, it's equivalent to paying $7.5 dollars per episode of B5 so it's not cheap for us fans and I'm not sure it I'd pay for episodes this way for anything other than B5.

[moreorless]

Using JMS' quote of half a billion dollars worth of DVD sales, that would equate to something like 1.5 million people buying each of the series box sets. If WB changes $15 dollars for each B5:TLT disc, assuming each person who bought a box set buys each TLT DVD, WB can expect over $20 million in revenue per DVD. Assuming that the budget per TLT disc is about the same as the TV movies approx $3 million if I remember, I would think that WB should be quite happy with the piles of gold heading their way. I think each TLT disc would break even at sales of a few hundred thousand. This assumes that no network pays to broadcast it.

On the other side of the coin, it's equivalent to paying $7.5 dollars per episode of B5 so it's not cheap for us fans and I'm not sure it I'd pay for episodes this way for anything other than B5.

If B5 fans are all your going to attract in the first place then I spose losing out on the wider market doesnt really matter to them.

As JMS himself has stated when you become a franchise for the sake of being a franchise you sacrifice alot of your creative freedom, your no longer building the characters/world around the story but instead looking for a story to hang on characters/world. TLS seem like a good way to avoid that by tieing directly into the original series, much moreso than the kind of material that would likely draw in the audiences for a new TV series or film.

Have we heard anything on the possible format of the series as/if it progresses? Is it going to remain three 30 min episodes or possible expand to two 45 min ones or even single 90 min features?

[Jan]

Have we heard anything on the possible format of the series as/if it progresses? Is it going to remain three 30 min episodes or possible expand to two 45 min ones or even single 90 min features?

Nothing so far. It would be cool for there to be the freedom for the segments to be however long the story required, though, wouldn't it?

We also have no idea how much each disk will be yet. How much to direct to DVD movies usually cost, anybody have an idea?

Jan

[Joseph DeMartino]

Using JMS' quote of half a billion dollars worth of DVD sales

Actually, JMS has put Warner Bros. gross profit at about $500 million worldwide, which means the DVD sales figure would be considerably higher. (I have no idea what WB's profit margin on this stuff is. Studio profit data is at least as closely held and carefully guarded as nuclear secrets - or a lot moreso, come to think of it. )

Regards,

Joe

[Jan]

Actually, JMS has put Warner Bros. gross profit at about $500 million worldwide, which means the DVD sales figure would be considerably higher.

Sorry to contradict you, Joe, but the posts I can find and the times I've heard him speak, JMS has always specified that the DVD sales have grossed half a billion in sales, not netted.

Jan

[Garibaldi's Hair]

And just to be even nit-pickier, this post says that they had grossed half a billion just after release of S5, so without sales figures from S5, Crusade and the movies.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Sorry to contradict you, Joe, but the posts I can find and the times I've heard him speak, JMS has always specified that the DVD sales have grossed half a billion in sales, not netted.

Jan

I just checked the archive as well and it looks like you're right. I could have sworn I had just recently read something where he said that figure represented WB's (gross, not net) profit. (Gross profit, for the non-accountants, is the difference between the sales price and the percentage of that price that goes to the studio. Net profit is the gross profit amount less certain costs and expenses, which can be estimated in setting the mark-up percentage, but not really calculated until after they've been incurred. GP is usually a lot higher than net profit.)

There may have been something in one of the scriptbooks, which are full of amusing little errors and typos. I delight in the fact that JMS gets as lost in the complexity of his own story as the rest of us do. (In one episode intro he speaks of Santiago assassinating his predecessor and working with the Shadows. He also sometimes conflates episodes, attaching a behind-the-scenes anecdote from one episode to a different one, or misplacing plot points. I think at one point he mixed up which event happened during which of Ivanova's searches for the First Ones -a sequence of episodes I had just watched.) So he may actually have written "gross profits" when he meant "gross sales."

Naturally I'll be devoting my Labor Day weekend to finding and posting the evidence that he did this so I can blame it on him.

Regards,

Joe

[ljg702]

And just to be even nit-pickier, this post says that they had grossed half a billion just after release of S5, so without sales figures from S5, Crusade and the movies.

JMS has been still quoting that half billion figure in the last month or so, so I think we can conlude that Season 5, Crusade + the movies didn't perhaps sell as well as the other box sets.

[Jan]

Naturally I'll be devoting my Labor Day weekend to finding and posting the evidence that he did this so I can blame it on him.

We wouldn't expect any less. Oh, and I noticed that he's actually made progress. At one point his 'profit' statement was reportedly showing that B5 was 80 million in the red and he recently said that he asked WB how they managed to have grossed half a billion while his statement still showed 50 million in the red. (Answer: "We made a really good deal, didn't we?"). So maybe there's hope that someday he'll get all the way down to 25 million in the hole. Of course, none of us is likely to be alive by then...<g>

Jan