“Warehouse 13” Opens Its Loading Dock

After over a year delay since first introduced to the press, SCI FI Channel’s proposed series “Warehouse 13” has finally been given the greenlight for 11 episodes to be added to the 2-hr pilot that was shot earlier this year.

Full production for the show begins in February 2009 and will see its debut July 2009 on SCI FI.

“Warehouse 13,” starring Eddie McClintock (“Bones”) and Joanne Kelly (“Vanished,” “The Dresden Files”), revolves around two Secret Service agents charged with procuring a huge, top-secret South Dakota storage facility chock full of supernatural artifacts and relics. The warehouse looks strangely familiar to that which housed the famed Ark of the Covenant in the closing scene of the first Indiana Jones movie – “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The series will co-star award-winning veteran actor Saul Rubinek (“Stargate SG-1,” “Eureka”). Rubinek is currently filming “Lighthouse,” a film based on the Edgar Allan Poe thriller.

The pilot episode of “Warehouse 13” was penned by BSG scribe Jane Espenson, along with fellow scribe David Simkins. The show is produced by Simkins and Brent Mote.

“This is a perfect companion show for ‘Eureka,’ and it fits into our larger agenda of broadening our network,” said Mark Stern, exec VP of original programming for the SCI FI Channel.

“Warehouse 13” joins two other new shows for the specialty cable channel. Also recently greenlit were the Ronald D. Moore BSG prequel “Caprica,” and “Revolution” – a series set on a distant planet colonized by Earthlings, where two families related by marriage are on opposite sides of a Revolutionary War-like conflict.