12 MAY 03: SHANKS STARS IN SUMURU

Stargate SG-1 star Michael Shanks told SCI FI Wire that he plays space adventurer Adam Wade in Sumuru, a low-budget film based on Sax Rohmer's novel series. "Way off into the future, my character lands on a planet and expects to find the last remnants of Earth's civilization," Shanks said in an interview. "But he finds that, almost in a Planet of the Apes kind of way, the culture has completely rearranged itself."

Women are the dominant gender, while men work in the planet's mines and are used to propagate the species. "It's sort of that Amazon Women on the Moon concept, with action and whatnot," Shanks said. "So the character becomes, hopefully, the voice of the audience."

Shanks filmed Sumuru during his time away from Stargate and considered the job "a paid vacation" in South Africa. "We don't take ourselves too seriously, because we know that this is sketchy material at best," he said.

Sumuru will likely air this fall on German television, as a German station partially financed the film, Shanks said. The producers will then shop the film to distributors in the United States and abroad.

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Photo Credits: DO Productions 2002

The Sumuru website
SCI FI Wire