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Dollhouse’s leading man Tahmoh Penikett, Smallville’s Laura Vandervoort and Alan Cumming (X-Men 2, The L Word, Tin Man) have been cast in Riverworld, SCI FI Channel’s four-hour movie/backdoor pilot based on the series of novels by the recently departed science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer.

Riverworld was previously adapted as a television film in 2003.

Penikett, best known to genre fans from Battlestar Galactica, will play Matt Ellman, an American war zone reporter who has witnessed the worst of humanity first-hand yet still grasps on to an optimistic spirit.

When a suicide bomber kills both Matt and his fiance Jessie (Vandervoort), they awaken, separated in a mysterious world where everyone who has ever lived on Earth, seems to have been “reborn” along the banks of a seemingly endless river.

Determined to locate Jessie, Matt joins forces with a 13th century female samurai warrior named Tomoe (Jeananne Goossen) and American novelist Sam ‘Mark Twain’ Clemens (Mark Deklin). Together they sail upriver in search of its source, and to discover where they are and who put them there. Alan Cumming will guest star as the mysterious ‘Caretaker.’

Riverworld is produced by Reunion Pictures. It went into production this week in Vancouver. The four-hour movie is directed by Stuart Gillard and written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Andromeda, The Dresden Files).

Riverworld will premiere on SCI FI in 2010. RHI will distribute internationally.

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