The good news keeps on coming for everyone Babylon 5 fans: The entire series is coming to Blu-ray just months after it was announced that an animated feature film is in the works. The 30th anniversary release will include all 110 episodes of its five-season run and its pilot TV movie, gather. Show creator J. Michael Straczynski shared a celebratory tweet to fans saying, “YOU WANT IT, YOU WANT IT, AND IT MIGHT HAPPEN!”
CAREFUL #BABYLONIA5 FANS! YOU WANT IT, YOU ASKED FOR IT, AND IT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN! To celebrate B5’s 30th anniversary, the Complete Babylon 5 series will be released on BLU-RAY on December 5th, ’23. Pre-orders can be placed starting today through the retailer of your choice. Huzzah! pic.twitter.com/9OfI05I0fa
– J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) July 18, 2023
Straczynski’s series followed the inhabitants of a 23rd century Earth Alliance space station designed to broker peace between five powerful empires. His initial production wasn’t the highest quality – to say the least – jumping between acted scenes and blurry CGI frames. But, in 2021, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment was released Babylon 5 rebuilt to stream on what was then called HBO Max and as a digital download on iTunes and Amazon. The original camera negatives were scanned in 4K and then downscaled to HD with a cleanup and color correction to boot. The CGI sequences were upscaled to HD and the show has since been available to watch in the original 4:3.
The Blu-ray release will be “fully remastered in HD,” which could be the 2021 update or a newer version. Babylon 5‘s Blu-ray edition is now available to pre-order for $100 and will be released in the US and Canada on December 5th.
