The new Knight Rider series may not look very much like the 2-hour telefilm that aired earlier this year. The tv movie received very good ratings, but most reviews were not terribly positive. To bring it to series NBC has hired “The Fast and the Furious” writer, and “Vegas” showrunner, Gary Scott Thompson, on board - and Gary is looking to make some major changes.

In a two part interview with Knight Rider online Mr. Thompson explains how he was disappointed with the pilot, and wasn’t interested in making that into a series. Characters from the pilot will carry over into the series (some of them will, anyway) and Mike will still be Michael Knight’s son, but the show is in for some big changes - and an upping on the tech and “cool” factor.

Mr. Thompson wants to look at where tech is going in the future and get some more futuristic gadgetry into the car. He wants it to be “fast, furious, and fun.”

Most importantly, to me anyway, he wants the show to be suitable for families. Pushing the envelope on what they can do with the cars and the action, while making it great for kids, and great for parents on a whole different level. I sincerely hope he succeeds with this -because that is one thing the pilot was definitely missing. We all knew Michael Knight was a ladies man, but you’d never see him wake up with two bimbos like Mike Tracer did in the pilot.

KITT will have a variety of new features, including some form of a Turbo Boost, but they’re not exactly sure what it will look like just yet. The show should also look a lot faster, with the cars moving at higher speeds than they did in the 2-hour pilot. He also said that the “Attack Mode” is going to be redesigned…and that design is going to be kept a secret for as long as humanly possible.

I’m more excited than ever for this series now. I enjoyed the pilot, but not everyone did - and it soulds like Mr. Thompson has a good idea on just how this show should be - and how it should play to today’s audiences. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.

NBC has officially added ‘Knight Rider’ to the 2008-2009 line up. This comes as no surprise after the 2-hour pilot did solid numbers when it premiered in Feb. The telefilm was not received terribly well by critics (although, I must say - I loved it.), but the network cares more about ratings than it does reviews.

The show may end up in a Friday night time slot, but there is still quite a bit of time before the show premieres this fall, so anything could still happen.

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time then you know how big of a fan of ‘Knight Rider’ I am - and how eagerly I have been anticipating this two-hour movie pilot. Having said that, I approached the pilot with a reserved eye - mainly because I don’t care of the look of the Ford Mustang (just a personal preference) and I was unsure of Kilmer in the role of K.I.T.T. - plus, most of these remakes (”sequel” or not) recently have been pretty poor. After seeing how bad ‘Bionic Woman’ turned out, I couldn’t help but be cautious.

The plot is simple enough - An evil group of guns for hire called “Black Water” have discovered that Charles Graiman (Bruce Davison) has built a second super-car, the “Knight Industries Three Thousand”, or K.I.T.T. for short (voiced by Val Kilmer) who, if properly hacked into, could be used to start wars, drops bombs, and basically bring forth Armageddon. When Graiman is seemingly kidnapped, K.I.T.T. is sent to find Charles’ daughter Sarah, then Mike Tracuer, a former Army Ranger and family friend who has biological ties to the ‘Knight Legacy’.

The creative team behind this continuation of the ‘Knight Rider’ franchise made some very good choices with this pilot, and started doing things right from the very start. The show opening is nothing but shots of the car with a great updated ‘Knight Rider’ theme - and it just gets better from there. We see K.I.T.T. in action mere minutes into the show, he isn’t held back or treated as a mystery like some pilots try to do with things like this. We see fragments of the previous K.I.T.T. in Graiman’s work shop, which I think was meant to be a nod to fans, but is much more likely to just upset them since there favorite car is lying in pieces on the floor. Had the car been voiced by the original actor, William Daniels (who is now 85 years old) it would have been received differently, but I can’t imagine the rabid ‘Knight Rider’ fan base digging that.

Moving on though, we are quickly introduced to our cast, and the plot moves at brisk pace. We get to see all the cool new things that K.I.T.T. can do, and Val Kilmer proves his worth as the new voice of K.I.T.T. He has a great mix of snobbishness in his performance that would make William Daniels proud. Justin Bruening does a great job as Michael Tracuer as well. He is an excellent choice for the next generation of the Knight family, and has a modern version of the pretty boy looks that made David Hasselhoff so famous in the ‘Knight’ role originally. Much like Hasselhoff, Bruening will probably not get enough credit for his comedic timing, or ability to act. With the exception of his wooden expression after seeing the death of a loved one, I have no complaints about his performance, and I’m glad he was chosen for the role.

One of the things that I absolutely loved about the pilot were the cliffhanger commercial breaks. The original series used to leave you hanging with an old serial-styled cliffhanger to keep you from changing the channel during commercials, and this pilot did it with virtually every commercial break. I thought it was a fantastic choice on their part, and I literally could not fast forward through the commercials fast enough - BUT - they also managed to throw in several commercials for Ford staring Mike and K.I.T.T. - and I must admit, the bit worked on me, and I ended up watching most of the commercials - which made it all the more excruciating.

I have very little to complain about with this show. It was a great throw back to the 80s action shows and followed the formula to a “T”, while still feeling fresh and exciting. It’s not overly “deep” and your life is probably not going to change for the better from watching it - but it is fantastic escapist action tv at its best.

This was a perfect re-imagining of the franchise, or as close to one as we’re ever likely to get. I must say, however, that I wasn’t terribly impressed with dead-beat-dad ‘Michael Knight’. The Hoff did a fine job with his cameo, and I hope that he returns in a reoccurring role in the series, but I would have liked a little better reasoning for abandoning his son than “he had more important responsibilities”. That seems kind of cheap.

Regardless - I loved this pilot, and I will be extremely disappointed if we don’t see a new ‘Knight Rider’ series this fall.

Grade: A+

Some of you may have noticed that I’m excited about the new Knight Rider. Also know that this clip takes my expectations down a bit. I actually think Kilmer is a great choice for KITT - there is an arrogance in his voice that reminds me of William Daniels, but the dialogue in this particular scene is terrible. I still have high hopes, though - and I’m very much looking forward to checking out the show on Sunday.

This new NBC promo for the upcoming ‘Knight Rider’ pilot doesn’t give us an idea of what his voice will sounds like, since its obviously a sub to fill in until Val Kilmer gets the voice work done, but we do get to see KITT’s “voice modulator” which essentially serves as the face or mouth of KITT in the car when he’s talking to Mike and the other passengers - take a look below:

Wow - I have to say I’m shocked by this news. Apparently due to contractual obligations with Will Arnett’s long standing gig voicing GMC truck commercials, he was forced to back out of playing the role of KITT at the last minute. (you know, you’d think someone would have researched this before he did all of the voice work for the pilot - but whatever)

Last night, according to Knight Rider Online, producers met with, and cast, Val Kilmer (yes - former Batman, Val Kilmer) to replace Arnett on the show. It’s Feb 7th - the pilot airs in 10 days. To the production team I say - good luck.

Now, for those of you that are wondering why they didn’t cast the original voice of KITT, William Daniels, to take on the role, let’s clear a few things up. First, we don’t know if Mr. Daniels even wants the part - he may have been offered it…we don’t know. What we do know is that Mr. Daniels is 81 years old, and it may not be the best idea to cast an 81 man as the voice of a character for what you hope will be a long running series.

Regardless, ‘Knight Rider’ is still headed to TV screens on Feb. 17th - and it should be a very interesting night.

Knight Rider is shaping up as it gets closer and closer to launch, but one thing seem to be sure at this point - things are happening so fast, NBC can’t keep them straight. For example, the interior of the car has looked very different each time we’ve seen it. First we saw the inside of the remote car, which had a more traditional “knight rider” looking steering wheel, and little else. Then we saw a trailer that confirmed that look - but now, the official site has a full, round steering wheel as a main focus of the sites graphics. Now, however, there is also this link - which shows us what the inside of the car should look like in “Attack” mode - and its even more different than we’ve seen before.

So I doubt we’ll know for sure what everything is going to look like until the movie is actually released - why? Because I don’t think they know either.

The official Knight Rider site has gone live, btw - and you can check it out here.

Below you’ll find another promo (and my favorite thus far):

This newest Knight Rider promo has me slightly confused. The voice during the commercial doesn’t sound like Will Arnett to me at all. If you watch the first teaser, which admittedly only has him speaking two words, the voice sounds completely different. The original teaser sounds like Arnett to me, but this one doesn’t.

Another interesting thing is the interior shot of the car. The original KITT looks like a space ship on the inside, with monitors, crazy lights, and all kinds of buttons - but this interior (what little we’ve seen so far, anyway) looks pretty standard.

Feb. can’t get here fast enough for me. I’m ready to see this thing and see what happens with it.

Anyone who reads this site probably knows by now that I’m psyched for NBC’s upcoming Knight Rider tv-movie/backdoor pilot. I’m hoping the show is well produced, and entertaining - and I also hope that (if its good), it gets picked up for a 2008-2009 series (depending on when the strike ends).

What you might not know, however, is that this is not the first Knight Rider tv-movie/backdoor pilot. In fact, almost every incarnation of Knight Rider has been brought to television this way. The original series pilot was a 2-hour tv-movie. In the mid-90s there was a basic cable tv-movie for a series called Knight Rider 2010 that had absolutely nothing to do with the original series, but before that, there was an attempt to relaunch the Knight Rider franchise by NBC.

It was called Knight Rider 2000, and in a lot of ways it was similar to the project currently being developed by NBC. The pilot introduced a new KITT, although with the original voice, and a new driver for him. While David Hasselhoff was the star of the tv-movie pilot, it clearly set up Shawn McCormick (played by Susan Norman) as the star of what would have been the regular series.

The movie borrowed heavily from Robocop and several other sci-fi films, and really kicked the science fiction element of Knight Rider into high gear…with some really terrible results. In fact, this thing is gawd awful. I remember liking it as a kid, and wondering why it was never picked up as a series, but looking at it now, it’s easy to see why.

Let’s take a closer look…shall we?
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While watching Sundy Night Football last night, I was surprised to see a brief, 15 second teaser for the forthcoming NBC reboot of Knight Rider.

It doesn’t consist of much, not even a decent look at the car. But we do get a taste of Will Arnett as K.I.T.T. Check out its YouTubery goodness below.