SyFy announces next slate of Original Movies…

Updated on April 18, 2011 By Ken Begg 23 Comments

Red Faction: Origins — Saturday, June 4, at 9PM (ET/PT) — Robert Patrick (Terminator 2), Brian J. Smith (Stargate Universe) and Kate Vernon (Battlestar Galactica) star in Red Faction: Origins, based on the hugely successful Red Faction video game franchise. Twenty-five years have passed since Alec Mason (Patrick) led the Martian Colonies to freedom and 12 years since vengeful enemies killed his wife, kidnapped his daughter Lyra (Tamzin Merchant), and left a broken hero in their wake. Jake Mason (Smith), Alec’s only son and an officer in the Red Faction Militia, has his world turned inside out when he discovers that now, 12 years after her kidnapping, his sister is still alive. As a powerful new enemy swarms across the planet, Jake goes out to find her, only to learn that his lost sister is one of them — a cold-blooded soldier sworn to destroy the Red Faction. Vernon portrays The Matriarch, leader of the tribal Marauders sect. Red Faction: Origins is produced by Universal Cable Productions and UFO Films.

Ice Road Terror – Saturday, June 11, at 9PM (ET/PT) — Truckers (Brea Grant, Michael Hogan) face a deadly ice creature on the frozen roads. A production of ARO Entertainment.

Swamp Shark – Saturday, June 25, at 9PM (ET/PT) — Kristy Swanson*, D.B. Sweeney and Robert Davi star in the story of mutant sharks terrorizing the Louisiana bayous. A production of Active Entertainment.

[*Editor Ken: Ms. Swanson previously starred in the TBS “killer shark in the bayous” telemovie Red Water.]

Age of Dragons – July – Danny Glover stars in a re-imagining of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, set in a mythical realm where Captain Ahab and crew hunt dragons for the vitriol that powers their world. A production of Dragon Quest Productions LLC.

Super Eruption — July — A scientist and a park ranger (Juliet Aubrey, Richard Burgi) try to stop the eruption of a massive volcano under Yellowstone Park. A production of MarVista Entertainment.

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  • Charles

    Ken, I think you’ve got Tighs on the mind from Kate Vernon but IMDb says it’s Ty Olsson (another Galactica vet) in Ice Road Terror.

  • monoceros4

    After all, “reimagining” Moby Dick went really well for Asylum. Why not Siffy as well?

  • Petoht

    Super Eruption — July — A scientist and a park ranger (Juliet Aubrey, Richard Burgi) try to stop the eruption of a massive volcano

    “This caldera has a whole mess o’ folks on a whole mess o’ edges.”

  • fish eye no miko

    Danny Glover stars in a re-imagining of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, set in a mythical realm where Captain Ahab and crew hunt dragons

    …
    [facepalm]

    Super Eruption

    It’s about a teenager with really, REALLY bad acne.

  • Jimmy

    I’ve seen Age of Dragons and it is as bad as it sounds and not even much fun despite a scenery chewing Danny Glover, who really is to old for this shit, and a hilariously out of place Vinnie Jones.

  • Charles — Actually, I just cut and paste from a press release, so…who knows. I’ll take your word for it, though.

  • P Stroud

    I guess they aren’t kidding that they actually made a movie based on the most boringest TV Show on the air… Ice Road Truckers.

    On a more positive note I see feedback that the soon to be released “Hobo With A Shotgun” starring Rutger Hauer as the titular Hobo may be as good as “Black Dynamite” or “Machete”. Two movies that deserved Oscars and were viciously snubbed.

  • The Rev.

    Man, I saw that trailer for Swamp Shark months ago. It’s just now coming to Siffy?

    I like that every shot of the shark in the trailer is done with a prop shark instead of CGI. Hopefully the CGI’s at a minimum in it. I’ll probably end up regretting watching it, but who knows? Red Water wasn’t entirely terrible…

  • Mr. Rational

    Kristy Swanson AND D.B. Sweeney in the same movie. Wow. “Swamp Shark” must be where second-rate careers go to face their final inevitable rigor mortis.

  • TongoRad

    Jimmy- thanks for the warning but I still think I’ll wind up picking it up as soon as the DVD hits the Dollar Tree (which won’t take too long, I’m sure).

  • Rock Baker

    The Yellowstone volcano was already the subject of a shockingly decent TV movie called, I think, Super Volcano, which aired on, again, I think, TLC. It was mixed with a study on the theory hosted by either Tom Brocha (Brocah?) or Peter Jennings. I’d like to see it again, actually.

    You know, swamp-dwelling sharks sounds like classic exploitation material. Still, I have complete faith that they’ll ruin the concept (and waste Robert Davi’s talents). If it were an unearthed drive-in flick from the late 70s, I’d be excited. Instead, I’m glad once again that I no longer have broadcast television.

  • Foywonder

    I’ve exchanged a few emails with the maker of Swamp Shark and the impression I get is that the digital effects have been kept to a minimum in order to keep the budget down and also because he’s a bigger fan of practical effects.

    Still to come on the Syfy shark movie front: next year will bring us Jersey Shore Shark Attack (the one-joke premise I’m sure you’ve already deduced) and later this year The Asylum are planning Two-Headed Shark Attack.

    I’ve seen Age of the Dragons as well and it falls into that category of a decent idea made into a fairly wretched film. There are hardly any dragons in the movie, a major problem when the movie is entirely about dragon hunting. The climactic showdown with the white dragon barely registers as a showdown; calling it anticlimactic would be an injustice. The Pequod is some sort of land-roving vehicle that looks like a medieval Mardi Gras float. Ahab now has a hot adopted daughter who suffers from some sort of genetic defect that prevents her hair and make-up from ever getting scuffed despite indication that she even owns a make-up kit or a hairbrush. Half the dialogue sounds modern and the other more poetic half sounds like it was lifted straight from Melville’s novel. It would probably have been a total bore had it not been for Danny Glover’s grandiose performance – an F4 on the Nic Cage Fujita scale of overacting.

    Also yet to come from Syfy:

    XTINCTION: PREDATOR X – Practically the same exact premise as Swamp Shark except the maneating monster prowling the Louisiana bayous is a cloned Pliosaur dinosaur known as Predator X, an early ancestor of the alligator referred to as the “T-Rex of the ocean”. Predator X is nearly 50 ft long, has giant, razor sharp teeth and is lightning fast in the water. Not sure something that big could sustain itself in a swamp, but this is a Syfy movie we’re talking about and we all know they treat science as a wiffle ball.

    ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE (working title) — October 2011 — Months after a zombie plague has wiped out 90 percent of the American population, a small group of survivors fight their way cross-country to a rumored refuge on the island of Catalina. A production of The Asylum.

    GRETL — November 2011 — As an adult, a witch hunter (Hansel) returns to the village where he lived as a child to find and kill the witch who killed his sister, Gretl (Shannen Doherty), only to find that Gretl is not dead and danger lurks around every corner.

    SNOWMAGEDDON (working title) – December 2011 — A story about a mystical snow globe that makes very bad things happen in the real world when it is shaken.

    ST. PATRICK DAY’S LEPRECHAUN (working title) — St Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17th, 2012 — An evil leprechaun who has been imprisoned within the roots of a majestic old oak tree, is accidentally set loose on St. Patrick’s Day. Once free, he takes out his bloody revenge on the descendants of the people who originally imprisoned him. A production of After Dark Films.

    BIGFOOT – 2012 — 1970’s pop culture icons Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family) and Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch) face off in the hunt for the legendary mountain creature. A production of The Asylum.

    And what could be the daffiest premise for a Syfy disaster flick yet:

    SUPER STORM – “Jupiter’s famous blemish, the Great Red Spot, has vanished. When massive storms are reported in North America, it quickly becomes apparent that the huge, high storm that has been swirling around Jupiter for hundreds of years has landed on Earth. Swallowing up everything in its path, the Great Red Spot threatens to transform Earth into another Jupiter-like gas giant in just a matter of days! Can Earth be saved from this Super Storm?”

    I cannot possibly fathom what cockamamie scientific mumbo jumbo the writers have concocted to explain how and why Jupiter’s “Red Spot” has packed up its bags and decided to move to bluer pastures. I need to get to work on my script about the rings of Saturn suddenly leaving Saturn’s orbit and hurdling through space threatening to cut Earth in half like a giant cosmic buzzsaw.

  • Scott, thanks! That’s fabulous stuff. (Your commentary, not the movies.) Would you mind me posting it as it’s own blog entry, just to make sure nobody misses it?

    By the way, Two-Headed Shark would be the greatest thing ever, but only if it had a shark head at each end, like the pushmi-pullyu.

  • Rock Baker

    You can’t be serious. That leprechan plot is lifted whole cloth from Ernest Scared Stupid!

    If this report is even half acurate, we’ve reached the darkest days of genre fare. This is just sad.

  • Ericb

    Super Storm sounds like something the Legion Of Doom would cook up.

  • Ericb

    Also the Red Spot storm is about 2 to 3 times the size of the Earth so it would have a hard time landing much less turning the Earth into a gas giant.

  • Foywonder

    Sure, Ken, feel free to post it. Here’s a few more forthcoming Syfy disasters to add to it.

    DOOMSDAY PROPHECY – When a sudden rash of worldwide geological disturbances threatens the planet, a desperate search begins for a vanished author who is believed to hold the key in predicting future disasters. But the author is soon discovered dead and in his possession is an ancient Divining Rod – a device that bestows visions of the future upon those who hold it. As the Divining Rod paints a bleak vision for Earth’s future, it’s a race against time to find the whereabouts of ancient devices that can counteract the devastating geological disturbances that are literally splitting the planet apart…

    EARTH’S FINAL HOUR – When a super-dense fragment of an interstellar mass punches through the Earth’s core, the impact slows down the globe’s rotation threatening the world with total destruction. Tech wiz, Jenna Simms, sees an unmistakable pattern correlating to fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field that will inevitably culminate in the Earth suddenly standing still. The effects of which will not only divide the planet into searing heat and extreme cold but will also wipe out the land masses as the still moving atmosphere will sweep away anything not anchored to bedrock. Will this be Earth’s final hours?

    COLLISION EARTH – When a massive comet collides with the Sun, the explosion jettisons the planet Mercury from its orbit and sends it on a fatal collision course with Earth. With each passing day, Earth’s unstable gravitational field.

    And let’s not forget Roger Corman’s next monster hybrid: PIRANHACONDA.

  • Rock Baker

    My previous statement still works.

  • The Rev.

    I’ll probably watch at least Xtinction, just because I find the lack of resurrected pliosaurs in genre movies to be ridiculous. How could you not want to use them? They’re awesome!

    I was so thrilled when that Tylosaurus popped up and ate a guy in The Land That Time Forgot many years ago. Other than that, the closest we’ve gotten is Dinoshark, who’s built like a giant ichthyosaur with a pliosaur’s head. Sadly, the design was the only think about that movie I remotely liked.

    Pliosaurs and gulper eels, that’s what I’m making movies out of someday.

  • tim

    re: super eruption. how does one stop a volcano from erupting?

  • Foywonder

    re: super eruption. how does one stop a volcano from erupting?

    Given this is Syfy we’re talking about, something’s probably getting nuked. Nuclear weapons are nature’s band-aid, you know?

  • Petoht

    You know… SNOWMAGEDDON sounds like it would be a pretty awesome episode of that old Friday the 13th TV series. You know, the one that had nothing to do with the movies, but was about the curio shop with all the cursed artifacts. Actually, it would have worked for Eerie, Indiana too.

    It sounds like it could be a really awesome weird fiction story, but I don’t have faith that SyFy will be able to pull it off.

  • P Stroud

    A comet knocks Mercury out of orbit? It would have to be like 1000 times bigger than Jupiter to pull that off. Then the resulting explosion of solar radiation would fry Earth long before Earth had to worry about colliding with Mercury. I’m sure the SyFy geniuses will explain all this in the most uninteresting way.