Sci-Fi Storm

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s Colm Meaney and Camp‘s Charlotte Nicdao have joined the Syfy mini-series project Childhood’s End.

Meaney will Wainwright, a powerful news organization owner while Nicdao will play zoologist Rachel Osaka.

Childhood’s End follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious “Overlords,” whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.

Syfy today announced it is developing a one-hour drama series about a futuristic prison society, 51st State, from Fox 21 Television Studios.

Oscar nominee Craig Borten (Dallas Buyers Club), who sold the pitch to Syfy, will write the pilot. Peter Chernin (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), Katherine Pope (New Girl) and Borten will serve as executive producers.

As 51st State unfolds, the United States, confronting a prison population stretched to the limit, purchases Greenland and converts it into a frontier prison colony with male and female convicts incarcerated together.

Promised conditional freedom, the inmates are driven to the edge of their humanity when that promise, along with others, is broken. Struggling to seize control and exact revenge, reluctant heroes emerge — but what exactly are they fighting for?

John Rhys-Davies, who has graced screens in a variety of genre roles and most famously as Gimli and Treebeard in The Lord Of The Rings, will go back to the fantasy realm as King Eventine, the patriarch in Shannara, MTV’s scripted series based on Terry Brooks’ novel [asin=0345285549]The Elfstones of Shannara[/asin], the second in the series.

The Shannara stories are based hundreds of years in the future in a post-apocalyptic Earth that has reverted to medieval times and in which magic has re-emerged. The most recent book, [asin=0345540700]The High Druid’s Blade[/asin], was release this past July and is the first of a new trilogy, The Defenders of Shannara.

Production is expected to begin next month in New Zealand.