Sanctuary | |
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Season 2-3 title screen
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Created by | Damian Kindler |
Starring |
Amanda Tapping Robin Dunne Emilie Ullerup Christopher Heyerdahl Ryan Robbins Agam Darshi |
Theme music composer |
Joel Goldsmith (season 1) Andrew Lockington (season 2–4) |
Country of origin | Canada |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 4 |
No. of episodes | 8 (webisodes) 59 (TV episodes) (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) | Damian Kindler Amanda Tapping Martin Wood Keith Beedie N. John Smith Sam Egan Andrea Gorfolova Carrie Mudd |
Running time | 43 minutes |
Production company(s) | Sanctuary 1 Productions Stage 3 Media |
Distributor | Entertainment One |
Release | |
Original network | Syfy |
Original release |
Web series: March 14, 2007 – August 30, 2007 Television series: October 3, 2008 – December 30, 2011 |
External links | |
Website |
Sanctuary is a Canadian science fiction-fantasy television series, created by Damian Kindler and funded largely by the Beedie Development Group. The show is an expansion of an eight-webisode series that was released through the Internet in early 2007. Seeing the success of the web series, Syfy decided to buy the broadcast rights to the series and pay to re-stage the series in a season of thirteen episodes.
The show centers on Dr. Helen Magnus, a 157-year-old teratologist (born August 27, 1850), and her team of experts who run the Sanctuary, an organization that seeks out extraordinarily powerful creatures and people, known as Abnormals, and tries to help and to learn from them while also having to contain the more dangerous ones.
The series premiered on October 3, 2008, in both Canada and the United States and on October 6 in the United Kingdom. The premiere drew in more than 3 million viewers, making it the highest rated original series premiere for Syfy since Eureka debuted in July 2006. The premiere two-parter, "Sanctuary for All", was a combination and rewriting of the first four webisodes and was followed by "Fata Morgana", based on Webisodes 5-8. Amanda Tapping, with all of the original cast from the web series, made the transition to the television series. A second season of 13 episodes aired in 2009–10, and Sanctuary was renewed for a third season of 20 episodes on December 12, 2009. The second season premiered on Friday, October 9, 2009, in the 10 pm timeslot. In Australia, the program debuted on Pay Television's Sci Fi and on free-to-air channel ABC2, where Season 1 started on March 1, 2010, each Monday at 9:30 pm. Season 2 commenced on July 12, 2010, in the same timeslot. Season 3 premiered Friday, October 15, 2010, on Syfy in its original 10 pm timeslot. In January 2011, Sanctuary was renewed for a fourth season, which finished airing on December 30, 2011. On May 21, 2012, Syfy announced that Sanctuary will not be returning for a fifth season and that the show has been cancelled. On October 8, 2012, PPI Releasing announced that it would distribute the series in U.S. syndication, starting fall (autumn September/October) 2013.