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J. Michael Straczynski has 10 different feature projects in various stages of development, all of them launched in the two years since he sold his first spec feature, “Changeling,” to Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment. Before that Joe, as he is called, worked in television, for which he created the long-running cult hit “Babylon 5.” He talks with Eric Estrin about trying to sell what people aren’t buying and about gritting your teeth until it hurts.
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“Babylon 5” took five years, because at that time, no American space-based science-fiction series had gone more than two seasons in 25 years, so the odds were completely against us.
For five years it went from network to studio to studio to production company, and it was just no, no and by the way, no -- we’ve tried this before, it’s not gonna work. “Star Trek” owns the playing field. It took five years to find two guys -- one at Warner Brothers and one at Chris-Craft stations, at that time, who got it and said, Look, we’re gonna be creating this new network called PTEN, why don’t you come and present it to the group?
I went to the meeting and, like 30 different shows were being created in front of these studio executives over a period of like a week -- and I had one shot at this.
