story identification - Help identifying unknown fantasy movie/show where prisoners are punished with immortality?

I've been looking for years - only things I have are, the protagonist is a man, he's friends with a young man who can shape shift - at one point the man talks to a jaguar like creature thinking it's the young man, while he's actually off to the side telling the man not to stop talking, or the cat will tear his throat out.

There's a weird prison, the warden is a large, Jabba the Hutt like creature to my memory and he loves a female prisoner sentenced with immortality. He lets her out once every.... Blank years to walk on the beach.

I'm not sure if this is some obscure b-movie or awful sci-fi channel series or maybe a mini-series? But any help would be appreciated.

Answer

Sounds like White Dwarf. It was a failed pilot for a series, I think.

Wikipedia summary:

In the year 3040, New York medical student Driscoll Rampart (Neal McDonough) is completing his internship on Rusta, a rural planet which due to it being tidally locked to its primary, is divided into contrasting halves of day and night with the halves separated by a wall. The two sides are involved in a civil war: The day side containing a Victorian-styled colony is at odds with the night containing a medieval kingdom. The differences between the two cultures leaves Rampart in a state of wonder. Rampart arrives from Earth for a six-month stint at the Light Side clinic run by Dr. Akada (Paul Winfield). Rampart's ambition is to eventually set up a private practice in Manhattan on Park Avenue.

Some related questions:

Show about half of the world on perpetual night and the other on day. Which has a link to the full movie.

Fantasy TV series from the 90s

90s fantasy movie about a magic world split light and dark Which has a link to a MUCH better synopsis (emphases mine):

Driscoll seeks refuge outside, but the wind is up. A child patient nicknamed Never meets him. Never is an empathic shape-shifter whose powers are known to the Rustians as Proteus Syndrome. He is a societal pariah to his wealthy parents as he morphs uncontrollably into anything from a boy-sized raven to a panther. He can even change into the loved ones he finds in the minds of the people nearest in proximity to him -- including Driscoll's recently deceased fiancé.

Elsewhere in this fantastical world dwells a fantastic, mythical character with tusks and horns -- a creature named Osh. Osh is the warden of the Dark Sider King's prison, The Keep. His prime charge is Lady X, a beautiful "young" woman more than 500 years old who was convicted of having created a plague on Earth that killed billions -- though she pleads she is innocent. She is kept alive by Osh's ability to secrete a hormone that affords an entirely undesired immortality. The only problem is that this big, lumbering beast is also in love with her.

At the end:

Afterwards, bedecked in a flowing, white gown complete with ornamental wings, Ariel joins Acada and Driscoll for a picnic by the Sea of Tears. The once elusive Ariel is quite attentive to Driscoll. Osh arrives with his beloved Lady X for whom he has risked death to grant her single wish to see the sun again.