Thu Oct 9, 2008 — by Josh Wigler

Sci Fi Channel Sets Up Five Telefilms

New Deal with RHI Entertainment

The Sci Fi Channel and RHI Entertainment are teaming up for their fourth multipicture deal in the past 12 months. This new deal includes basic cable rights for the U.S. premiers of five new horror and thriller projects. Three of these telefilms will begin shooting in Romania soon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, these films are:

Sand Serpents, starring Gedrick, follows American combat soldiers in the Afghan desert who battle the Taliban and a horde of giant carnivorous serpents.

Alien Western is set in an Old West town in the 1890s where monstrous buglike machines from another world attack.

Carney, based on the Jersey Devil legend, where a fiendish carnival side-show attraction escapes and terrorizes a Depression-era Mid-Atlantic town.

Also included in the deal are Ricky Schroder's Hellhounds and the Eric Balfour-starring Rise of the Gargoyle. Fun fact: Schroder and Balfour were co-stars on the sixth and most recently televised season of 24.

RHI produced a third of all Sci Fi's movies in the last season, according to RHI's Robert Halmi Jr.

"What sets our product apart is that we spend more money so that we can get better cast and have better production values onscreen," Halmi Jr. clarifies.

RHI, who also produced Sci Fi's record-breaking Tin Man limited series, will distribute the telefilms in key territories across the globe.

Sci Fi Channel has many telefilms in the pipeline, including the Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, directed by Edward James Olmos, and a reimagining of Children of the Corn, starring Battlestar vet Kandyse McClure and Heroes' David Anders.

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