The film follows Penikett's character, Matt Ellman, after his death when he wakes up in a new world along with everyone else who died — including September 11th victims and Mark Twain. He's determined to find his girlfriend, (Laura Vandervoort) who also died with him. But lots and lots of insanity gets in the way including one very blue Alan Cumming.

Here's the official synopsis:

When American war zone journalist Matt Ellman (Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar Galactica) and his fiancée, Jessie Machalan (Laura Vandervoort, Smallville), are killed in an explosion, Matt awakens, separated from Jessie, on the banks of a river snaking endlessly across a mysterious new plane of existence. On Riverworld, everyone who has ever lived on Earth, ever soul throughout time, has been reborn along the banks of a seemingly endless river. Determined to locate Jessie, Matt aligns with Tomoe (Jeananne Goossen, Falcon Beach) , a 13th century female warrior, Allegra (Romina D'Ugo, Hairspray), a 15th century courtesan of shifting alliances, and American novelist and Riverboat captain Samuel Clemens (Mark Deklin, Justice), better known as Mark Twain. With a full crew of adventurers, they embark upriver to understand where they are, why they are here, and to what unknowable end the river winds.

Under the guidance of the peculiar Caretaker (Alan Cumming, Tin Man), their quest takes them below to a torturous Cavern of Souls and the Underworld prison, above in a Zeppelin piloted by a brilliant German engineer, and forward to cross paths with renowned explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton (Peter Wingdfield, 24) who has joined forces with Francisco Pizzaro to conquer and destroy Riverworld. For Matt, each unfathomable day, each nefarious encounter, only deepens the conundrum of Riverworld and raises more questions…What happened to Earth and when? What is the purpose of the burning Orb? What powers are contained in the infamous Dark Tower? And why is their every move being followed by the watchful eye of an alien being? The answers are waiting beyond the endless swells of Riverworld.

Charting a territory somewhere between Gulliver's Travels and The Lord of the Rings" (Time), Philip Jose Farmer's Nebula Award-winning saga becomes a spectacular miniseries event-a feast for the eyes, the mind, and the heart of everyone who longs to explore the meaning of life, the mysteries of death, and everything that lies between.

Riverworld will be on Syfy in early 2010.

Oh, and there are spoilers in here — especially if you haven't seen the end of Dollhouse season one, or Battlestar Galactica.

We were excited to talk to Penikett, who's one of the most compelling actors on television, at Comic Con. In case you can't hear the audio on that clip, he told us not to be too sure that former FBI agent Paul Ballard is really working for the mysterious Dollhouse that he was fighting to destroy for so long. In fact, Penikett hints that Ballard still has his own agenda. As for the peppery relationship between Paul Ballard and Boyd Langton, which included a fistfight as well as a team-up in last season's "Omega," Penikett tells us to expect a lot more conflict between those two.

We had a question we'd been dying to ask about the end of Battlestar Galactica — before the final episode aired, Penikett told some interviewers that he'd convinced the show's producers to change Helo's fate. In the original script for the finale, Helo had an ending which seemed too obvious, according to Penikett — until talked the producers into changing it. So we were dying to know — what was Helo's original fate? And according to Penikett, Helo was supposed to die in the final battle.

We were also excited to talk to Penikett about Riverworld, the Syfy miniseries based on the classic novels by Philip José Farmer. He's starring in this adaptation, which airs this January or February and which could turn into an ongoing series. He praised everyone involved with the production and says that Mark Deklin is great as Mark Twain — and he does build his riverboat, like in the books. Most importantly, though — we needed to know if Penikett will be resurrected in the buff, just like everyone in the books? Here's what he said:

Ah, marketing — you certainly know how to get our attention, tie the boys up and we're there, especially if it's Tahmoh Penikett. But all kidding aside, Riverworld is a huge undertaking for the Syfy channel. It's a wild story about the place we all end up after death, focused around a man separated from his fiancée and his struggle to get her back. All with the help of other famous dead people, like Mark Twain. It's a fantastical epic, and it will be quite an adventure, if they can pull it off. We've got our fingers crossed. Until its release in 2010, here's a new, and longer, synopsis.

official synopsis:

When American war zone journalist Matt Ellman (Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar Galactica) and his fiancée, Jessie Machalan (Laura Vandervoort, Smallville), are killed in an explosion, Matt awakens, separated from Jessie, on the banks of a river snaking endlessly across a mysterious new plane of existence. On Riverworld, everyone who has ever lived on Earth, ever soul throughout time, has been reborn along the banks of a seemingly endless river. Determined to locate Jessie, Matt aligns with Tomoe (Jeananne Goossen, Falcon Beach) , a 13th century female warrior, Allegra (Romina D'Ugo, Hairspray), a 15th century courtesan of shifting alliances, and American novelist and Riverboat captain Samuel Clemens (Mark Deklin, Justice), better known as Mark Twain. With a full crew of adventurers, they embark upriver to understand where they are, why they are here, and to what unknowable end the river winds.

Under the guidance of the peculiar Caretaker (Alan Cumming, Tin Man), their quest takes them below to a torturous Cavern of Souls and the Underworld prison, above in a Zeppelin piloted by a brilliant German engineer, and forward to cross paths with renowned explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton (Peter Wingdfield, 24) who has joined forces with Francisco Pizzaro to conquer and destroy Riverworld. For Matt, each unfathomable day, each nefarious encounter, only deepens the conundrum of Riverworld and raises more questions…What happened to Earth and when? What is the purpose of the burning Orb? What powers are contained in the infamous Dark Tower? And why is their every move being followed by the watchful eye of an alien being? The answers are waiting beyond the endless swells of Riverworld.

"Charting a territory somewhere between Gulliver's Travels and The Lord of the Rings" (Time), Philip Jose Farmer's Nebula Award-winning saga becomes a spectacular miniseries event-a feast for the eyes, the mind, and the heart of everyone who longs to explore the meaning of life, the mysteries of death, and everything that lies between.

Watch a video of Alan Cumming going blue for his character over at RHI.

Heraclitus said you can't step into the same river twice, but that's what Syfy, having adapted Riverworld into a standalone feature in 2003, is trying with next year's more ambitious, four-hour miniseries based on Philip José Farmer's beloved novels. Judging by this Q&A at SciFiWire, however, scribe Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The 4400) seems undaunted by the prospect of alienating Farmer's loyal readers with an adaptation that ditches the original's storylines and relegates its protagonists to supporting character (or antagonist) status.

The basic premise is the same: deceased humans from across time find themselves living in a watery limbo, a planet-traversing river, where famous historical personages and obscure folk unite to unravel the mystery of their situation. Like the 2003 movie, however, the Wolfe miniseries will push aside the first book's protagonist (real-life Victorian explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton) in favor of a contemporary American protagonist (to be played by Dollhouse's Tahmoh Penikett) with a simple motive: to find his missing love (Smallville's Laura Vandervoort), who died with him in a suicide bombing.

Wolfe (whose strong résumé includes multiple episodes of Andromeda, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and The 4400) suggests that he wants to leave the saga's spiritual and philosophical underpinnings intact, but downgrading the swashbuckling, complex, real-life protagonist to a supporting role because American TV viewers might find him too obscure and unlikable doesn't speak well for the project's literacy and thoughtfulness. In fact, Wolfe hints that Burton may be more of an antagonist than a protagonist. Mark Twain, the hero of the second book, will turn up early on, having managed to build himself a riverboat.

Plus, Wolfe envisions future installments of this possible ongoing series, where he uses Farmer's platform as an opportunity to dig up various historical figures and watch them fight. "I'd love to do a story where the real Macbeth finds out about this play that has been written about him and is freaking pissed off because it makes him look like a dick!" Heh heh. Watch your back, Shakespeare!

Farmer, who died in February at 91, was reportedly upbeat about the prospect of this miniseries. These days, however, he's probably on a steamboat somewhere with Twain and Shakespeare, plotting vengeance.

The Riverworld books are set on an alien (but Earth-like) planet in the far future where, for some unknown reason, everybody who has ever lived is simultaneously resurrected as healthy, twenty-five year old versions of themselves. The various stories set in this universe explore both how famous historical figures interact with each other and their strange new surroundings, as well as the larger attempts by the thirty-six billion people on the planet to recreate human society.

Penikett plays Matt Ellman, a war correspondent who is killed and resurrected along with his fiancé, played by Smallville's Laura Vandervoort. The two characters, who as far as I can tell are being newly created for the miniseries, will serve as the protagonists and audience identification figures as they attempt to discover Riverworld's secrets and discover the sometimes surprising identities of the famous people they now meet. Joining them in the cast are Jeananne Goossen, Mark Delkin, and Alan Cumming as "The Caretaker."

Riverworld is just one of three four-hour movies, along with new adaptations of The Phantom and Alice in Wonderland, that RHI Entertainment is producing for the Sci Fi channel; RHI was previously behind the Tin Man miniseries that aired in 2007. All three are being considered as backdoor pilots, in that they may become regular series if ratings and reviews are strong enough, similar to Battlestar Galactica. (It's particularly fitting Penikett would now be the star of such a movie, considering Helo was never even supposed to survive past the BSG miniseries.)

Of the three, Riverworld is considered the best candidate for a follow-up TV series, although the other two are not without potential. The Phantom adapts the long-running comic strip, which follows Kit Walker, the twenty-first member of his family to bear the mantle of the Phantom in a tradition that stretches back to the 1500s. Screenwriter Daniel Knauf explained the TV-movie's particular take on The Phantom story to Newsarama back in 2008:

"In our story, we have a break in the lineage. The 22nd Phantom, the one we all know and love, his wife and his son died in an automobile accident. So when he died, there was no one to take over…But it turns out the son survived and has been raised by a foster family and has no idea who he is. They find him through a fluke when he's arrested on a trespassing charge, and he ends up getting his DNA into CODIS [the national DNA database]. The people in Bangalla who are still part of the Jungle Patrol — which we call Bpaa-Thap (which literally translates to 'Jungle Patrol') — they find him and decide to bring him in and train him. So it's a whole new game for this kid. So he's very conflicted, as far as who he was and who he thinks he is."

Desperate Housewives actor Ryan Carnes is set to play the Phantom, with Isabella Rossellini guest-starring as Lithia, a mind-control experiment's evil director (but then, is there any other kind?). Cameron Goodman and Sandrine Holt have also joined the cast. Less is known about Alice, RHI's third project. (Although we found a scary-looking photo of Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat on RHI's website.) As one could probably guess, it promises to be a darker, more adult revamp of Lewis Carroll's classic along the same lines of how Tin Man reworked The Wizard of Oz.

Of course, there's one question that hangs over any Tahmoh Penikett casting announcement - what does this mean for Dollhouse? The short answer is "not much." Riverworld and The Phantom started production yesterday, with planned air dates set for 2010. Considering the Syfy Channel's usual lag between miniseries and series (there were ten months separating the BSG miniseries and the first episode of the series proper), any regular series that would require a substantial time commitment from Penikett wouldn't likely materialize until 2011. As much as the latest wild Internet rumors are rather positive for Dollhouse's future, the show would have to make it all the way to a third season before there would be any potential conflict, and that's assuming Riverworld is successful enough to launch a series. In any event, this shouldn't be taken as an indication that the Dollhouse cast is already looking for other work.

So, for now, it's best to take this news at face value - that Tahmoh Penikett continues to get roles that he richly deserves. It only makes sense that you'd need a veteran of Battlestar Galactica to replace Battlestar Galactica.

['Battlestar' actor to star in 'Riverworld']
[Sci Fi orders 'Phantom,' 'Riverworld,' 'Alice']

Honestly, my heart sank when I saw the announcement, because it foregrounds Syfy's planned Alice In Wonderland miniseries. Presumably it'll be "dark" and in the style of the channel's Wizard Of Oz reinvention, Tin Man. But some things just ought to be left alone, and the idea of a more "character-driven" Alice makes me feel slightly ill.

Oh, and here's Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, just to seal the deal:

Aren't you excited now?

There's also a four-hour miniseries based on The Phantom, which Syfy promises will be in the vein of the Batman Begins and Iron Man movies. (I'm guessing it'll be similar to the Flash Gordon series.)

But really, the only thing that gives me hope is the idea of a four-hour Riverworld miniseries, which could turn into an ongoing show. Of all the science fiction book series you could imagine turning into an open-ended TV show, Riverworld is probably the best idea. In Farmer's novels, everyone who's ever lived on Earth wakes up - naked - along the banks of an endless river, with no idea how they got there. Historical figures and random oddities rub shoulders as they try to figure out the mystery of the Riverworld.

Oh, and I just realized the Sci Fi Channel already did an adaptation of Riverworld some years ago - but it sounds like this new version is not a continuation. Rather, it's a reboot or a fresh remake, judging from VP Mark Stern's comments in the Hollywood Reporter interview. Explains Stern:

"Riverworld," about a photojournalist transported to a mysterious world occupied by everyone who has ever lived on Earth, could have the most series potential if producers pull off the novel's tricky combination mixing a modern protagonist with reborn historical figures.

Characters in the story's world will be portrayed by actors in their 20s, so somebody like Napoleon wouldn't be "a balding man with his hand in his coat."

"Part of the fun of this is the reveal of who each character is," Stern said.

All three four-hour events are being made by RHI Entertainment, which also worked on Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars and a billion made-for-TV movies. Let's just keep our fingers crossed they don't do a hatchet job on Farmer's awesome novels. [Yahoo News]