Bowling255

Can anyone tell me the title of a fantasy/sci fi TV movie that aired on Nickelodeon at least once in the late 1990s with a plot involving a brother and sister in a ravaged ghetto like city full of corruption where they lived with their grandfather. People there are taken for bizarre mind experiments all the time, so the grandfather send them on a journey through a desert to find some utopia like haven. The grandfather can't go because of his failing health. The brother and sister set off, all the while being chased by the evil authorities. Along the way, they pick up a few friends, including a couple younger boys, a teen-aged desert drifter, a big bald guy, and a girl from the city who lost her boyfriend to the evil mind experiments. After escaping capture at least once, they make their way through a maze filled with poison gas and find a beautiful safe haven on a beach to live happily ever after. Last image being a grave stone/monument on the beach engraved with the grandfather's name. Do you know the title? Thank you.

Around ten years ago there was a made-for-television movie shown in the U.S. The movie was shown mostly like "news reports" about a meteor heading to Earth (which I believe was actually supposed to be some kind of alien spaceship). There was something of a controversy about the movie, and the network constantly showed reminders that it was a movie, not a real news broadcast. I can't remember the network it was on, though it was definitely a broadcast network, as opposed to cable. And it is not "The 4400" (which is a much more recent cable program), nor "War of the Worlds".