Ooops, I meant “new TV movie,” of course. This is a television film directed by Fred Wolf, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Gaulke.

Look for Bigfoot hunting to be the next wave in fictional television productions. First out of the gate: "Strange Wilderness" in 2006. The television movie would join the growing ranks of new television series with cryptozoological themes, like "Surface" on NBC-TV.

The plot for "Strange Wilderness" has two "animal enthusiasts" heading to the Andes in search of Bigfoot to boost the ratings of a show in trouble, which, of course, is named "Strange Wilderness."

Perhaps someone has done a bit of research for this one. The Andes do harbor a Bigfoot-type creature like our North American Bigfoot. In fact, the South American variety in the Andes looks exactly like Bigfoot in the USA and Canada.

The Andean kind had their first major sightings around the time the Bigfoot name was being born at Bluff Creek, California. In 1957, near Tolor Grande, Argentina, in the foothills of the Andes named the Curu-Curu Mountains, villagers reported the Ukumar-zupai. In May 1958, sightings occurred in the Cordilleras, near Rengo, Chile. Seventeen inch footprints are mentioned and encounters with large hairy bipeds.

As I wrote, along with coauthor Patrick Huyghe, in our forthcoming updated, indexed, and 2006 published book, The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates: "Today, stories of these hairy giants, often called ucumar, are still heard in Argentina. While visiting the mountainous regions of northern Argentina in 1979, the anthropologist Silva Alicia Barrios was told that the ucumar, or ucu, often screamed at cows and chickens and liked to eat payo, a cabbage-like plant."

Hopefully the scriptwriters will call the creatures Ucumar or Ucu, not Bigfoot!

The light comedy is set to star the recognizable funny men, Steve Zahn [played Al Giordino in Sahara (2005) and Wayne Lefessier in Saving Silverman (2001)] and Allen Covert [Ten Second Tom in 50 First Dates (2004)].