Cinefantastique Online

Movieweb recycles some news gleaned from Variety: the Sci Fi Channel has greenlight CAPRICA, a prequel to the popular BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paul Malcomson, and Polly Walker will star in the series, set fifty years before GALACTICA, which has already filmed a pilot. Show is tentatively scheduled for 2010.

” ‘Battlestar Galactica’ was absolutely our flagship show. It put us on the map and helped transform the perception of the network,” said Sci Fi prexy Dave Howe, noting that the cabler hopes to draw a broader audience to a series it sees as more compelling family drama than “space opera.”

“We want people to come to this who have never heard of ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ ” he added. “I think, because (’Galactica’s’) backdrop was space and spaceships, there was a barrier to entry for some viewers. ‘Caprica’ has none of that. It’s an intense family drama set on an Earthlike planet, in the near future, speaking to a lot of the ethical dilemmas that we as a human race are going to have to face very shortly.”