Douglas Netter
Douglas Netter is a United States television industry executive, his credits largely being in the field of science fiction. He is first credited as associate producer of the 1967 Matt Helm (Dean Martin) movie The Ambushers which involved a US-government built flying saucer.
Between 1970 and 1975 Netter was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at MGM Studios. In 1975 he produced the Dean Martin crime movie Mr. Ricco, and in 1978 was co-producer of the African mercenary movie The Wild Geese. The next year he began a period when he concentrated on the Western genre, producing The Sacketts, a TV miniseries based on Louis L'Amour's Sackett family and serving as executive producer of the NBC TV movie Buffalo Soldiers. Over the next two years he also executive produced Wild Times and L'Amour's The Cherokee Trail.
1987 saw Netter's first involvement with J. Michael Straczynski, when he was producer of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future that was story-edited and partially written by Straczynski, after which he was executive producer of the Babylon 5 TV series and various spin-offs (sharing equal executive producer credit with Straczynski). A still photo of Netter portrayed the Babylon 5 character of Earth Alliance President Luis Santiago (The A-Z Guide to Babylon 5, ISBN 0-440-22385-7).
Netter was the executive producer for Babylon 5. Between the third and fourth seasons, he founded and appointed himself CEO of Netter Digital, a CGI special effects company. Netter Digital then replaced Foundation Imaging as the special effects studio for the series, doing all the CGI work for the final season of that show, as well as several of the Babylon 5 telefilms, and did all the effects for its short-lived spinoff, Crusade. He was also an executive producer for the only season of Hypernauts in 1996.
With the cancellation of Crusade in 1999, Netter Digital lost its only client. Unable to promptly replace it with other customers, the company went out of business in 2000.
In 2006, Netter began executive producing Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, the latest venture set in the Babylon 5 universe. The direct-to-DVD publication was released on July 31, 2007.