SyFy Channel (going to take me a while to get used to that) has returned to the world of recently deceased author Philip Jose Farmer’s “Riverworld” novels. The network made a pilot way back in 2003 but they are ready again to take a dip back into the story of where we really go when we die. It will start as a 4 part miniseries but could be expanded into a full series.
Syfy also announced miniseries treatments for “The Phantom” and “Alice In Wonderland”



I remember the 2003 version. It was interesting, but you couldn’t shake the feeling they were making a pilot that didn’t get picked up.
Ok, the 2003 show was good, at least the parts where they talked about the aliens who were controlling/directing the afterlife. All the junk about Nero was meh. That’s what made the ending such a cliff hangar. They set up the beginning with this stunning imagery looking like Dark City’s memory imprinting, and the stunning take away of the council of aliens, and do not talk about them at all during the actual movie?
What gives? Give us something good!
From all accounts the 2003 movie/pilot was… well, let’s just say there aren’t many nice things said about it. Frankly I’m amazed that it was ever produced!
PJ Farmer’s Riverworld series has incredible scope, even if it does drag in parts. The principles behind the story – and the story itself – are particularly elegant, and the criminal treatment it received in 2003 would be compounded by continuing to destroy the integrity of Farmer’s original story.
I certainly hope that SyFy gives this version the at least as good a treatment as they gave the Dune miniseries.
And of course: GO HELO!
Oh gosh,
do todays movie writers ever really READ the book they are making a film after? After the desastrous last Harry-Potter-version (Half Blood Prince) I thought that they have learned their lesson – in vain, it seems. Again a Riverworld with horses (hey, except some fishes there are no bigger animals on that planet!) and then the new inhabitants leave the water fully in clothes. Poor bigots! Farmers said, they were naked when arriving on the shore (not in the water) in the morning and find their clothes in a pile aside them. So, just pure action and no deep thinking about the plot. What a pity and again wasted chance.