Web Series Spotlight: Riftworld Chronicles

Riftworld Chronicles started out as an 11-minute digital film called The Portal, directed and written by Jonathan Williams and starring Erin Karpluk (Being Erica) and Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica)

The Portal won various film festival awards, including one at the Salt Lake City Comic Con. The digital film also garnered a loyal fan base, one so dedicated that its Kickstarter campaign raised more than $60,000 towards making a web series based on it.

Riftworld Chronicles focuses on a struggling journalist who teams up with a dimension-traveling wizard, stuck in our world without his magic powers. She helps him on his quest to return home in exchange for the rights to his story. When a rift between the realms opens up and fantastical foes invade, they are forced to solve the mystery of what binds their worlds, and their fates, together.

The web series debuted on Punchline, the CBC’s (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) online comedy channel, back on July 14, airing 8 episodes in total.

Penikett stars as Alar, who comes from Ashenvale in the Easternmost of the Five Kingdoms (in his world). He works a court wizard in the seaside citadel of Caer Caladh. Training as a swordsman in the Regent’s Army, he kept his innate magic powers a secret during less tolerant times. Now a respected battle-mage, he splits his time between swordplay and spell craft.

Meanwhile, Karpluk stars as Kim, who is a fact checker at Real Life, a well-established lifestyle magazine, and is struggling to make it as a journalist. She once dreamed of travelling the world, making issue-driven documentaries, but the mysterious death of her parents made her the legal guardian of her slacker younger brother, who is now her reluctant roommate. Chronically single, Kim is a pub-trivia champion and on winter weekends teaches skiing at the local bunny hill.

Penikett and Karpluk, who are longtime friends, agreed to the project as a way to work together and they also serve as executive producers on the project, which actually ends [SPOILER ALERT] in a cliffhanger, allowing the project to be open for more in the future.

If you would like to check out the 8-part web series or learn more about the project, check out Riftworld Chronicles.