At long last, the silence has been broken. On March 8, 2001, in a fan chat at Canalchat.com, Jerry O'Connell said that "Sliders" will probably hit the big screen, but "it will be different."

A year earlier, O'Connell was set to meet with Sliders co-creator Robert K. Weiss to discuss the film. "[It] should be pretty fun," O'Connell said.

What will be "different" about "Sliders" on the big screen is up for speculation, but one thing we do know: "Sliders: The Movie" is not dead. In a recent conversation on AOL Instant Messenger, series co-creator Tracy Tormé reportedly told "jerry_o_who" that he had spoken with Weiss the weekend of March 1 about it. "I was with Bob (Weiss) last weekend we talked about it briefly," Tormé said. As for whether or not Tormé will work on the film, he said, "Sure, if it happened I might be interested, if we could get the original cast and return to the original concept."

As we already know, Weiss has contacted at least two of those cast members -- Cleavant Derricks and Jerry O'Connell. As for who signs on in the end, only time will tell.

[Special thanks to "SFDarlin" and "jerry_o_who" for posting this information on the Dominion Sliders BBoard. A full English transcript is available at Earth62.net.]

Jerry O'Connell, who starred in The SCI FI Channel series Sliders, told SCI FI Wire that he is scheduled to meet the week of Mar. 6 with series co-creator Robert K. Weiss to discuss the possibility of making a feature film based on the show. It would be O'Connell's first association with the series since he left it after the fourth season.

Speaking at a press event to promote his upcoming movie Mission to Mars, O'Connell said, "I'm meeting with [Weiss] next week for a possible Sliders movie. A feature film. ... [It] should be pretty fun." Weiss co-created the popular SF series in 1995 with Tracy Tormé.

O'Connell, who played the lead character Quinn Mallory, said he lost touch with the show since he left, owing in part to what he called a contractual dispute between him and Studios USA, which owns the show. It's part of the reason he would decline to take part in another television series based on Sliders, O'Connell said. Studios USA had no comment on the dispute. Studios USA is owned by USA Networks, which also owns The SCI FI Channel.

In Mission to Mars, O'Connell plays astronaut Phil Ohlmyer, who takes part in a rescue mission to the red planet. "It's so much more fun to be an astronaut," he said of his role. "You put on that spacesuit every day. You have the American flag over one arm. You've got a NASA patch on another. That's like every red-blooded American's dream come true. It was a real pleasure. I was like a four-year-old again getting into that suit. I loved it."

"Sliders never dies; it never goes away," [Cleavant] Derricks insists. "It always stays there because it's in the imagination of every person that watched that show. Who's to say what's going to come out of it?"

In fact, Sliders co-creator Robert Weiss recently announced plans for a Sliders feature film. "Robert Weiss, one of the best producers that we've had a chance to work with, always had a fondness for this show," says Derricks. "He and Tracy Torme have discussed things. I'm going to be talking with Tracy later on this week, because Tracy had mentioned that he needs to talk to me about some ideas that they've been discussing. I would trust and hope that if that came about, it would happen with the original cast, because I would love to give that back to the fans. But I wouldn't mind even doing that with the original cast and even coming on with the newer cast later on, because I had that much fun with all of those people, and I think they have something to say about sliding."