Robert Hewitt Wolfe producing "Riverworld" movie

Fans of Philip Jose Farmer were probably a little disappointed with the first attempt to bring the Riverworld books to the small screen. In 2003 Kari Skogland and Stuart Hazeldine brought us a rather forgettable adaptation filmed in New Zealand.

The late actor Kevin Smith (known worldwide as Ares from Hercules and Xena played the villain Valdemar but his voice was dubbed by another actor because his untimely death prevented him from looping his own dialog.

As television movies go this one pretty much sucked, in my opinion. Of course, I'm one of those people who perpetually hopes for some sort of faithfulness to the books and New Zealand just doesn't begin to look like the Riverworld of my imagination.

Nonetheless, the series is rather compelling (at least in the early books) and I felt it was only a matter of time before someone took another stab at the project.

Lo! and Behold! Robert Hewitt Wolfe is coming out with a new 4-hour miniseries based on "Riverworld" in 2010.

Like the first adaptation, Wolfe's storyline takes some liberties with the novel's story, and the lead character in the new show is not (as best I can recall) a character from the books. Two main point of view characters from the books, explorer Richard Burton and author Samuel Clemens (both from 19th century America), appear in the show but are not main characters.

Wolfe does have some ideas for what he'll do if the show becomes a full-fledged series. If that happens, let's hope he has a smoother ride than he did with Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.

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