Knight Rider TV Movie Details Revealed
I still can’t believe NBC is remaking Knight Rider (again), but they are — and the two-hour TV movie is scheduled to premiere on February 17th.
Some details and publicity photos were released by the network today. Here’s their plot summary, verbatim:
Sarah Graiman (Russo) is a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, following in her genius father Charles’ (Davison) footsteps. But when men attempt to abduct her, Sarah receives a mysterious call from KITT warning her that he’s a creation of Charles, who also invented the first KITT 25 years ago—and that her father is in serious danger. Sarah and KITT track down her best friend from childhood, Mike Tracer (Bruening), a 23-year-old ex-Army Ranger, whom Sarah hasn’t seen since he left home at 18. Having served in Iraq, Mike is now jaded and lost and initially resistant. Eventually he agrees to help Sarah and the two set out to discover who’s behind the attempt to procure KITT and find Charles.
TV Week
Nice retconning of the original series history there — after all, it was Wilton Knight who created KITT, not “Charles Graiman.” But of course, Richard Basehart is long gone!
Sadly, the debate in the comments section of the TV Week post devolved immediately into political sniping, because the movie’s main character is a “jaded” Iraq vet. Apparently a lot of people are claiming typical liberal bias, because the network has crafted a character who is a dissatisfied war vet. As if it were inconceivable that anyone who risked their life and witnessed their friends getting blown to hell in Iraq could be “jaded.” What’s less believable, in my opinion, is that the kid is already an ex-Army Ranger with combat experience at only 23 years of age. Is it illegal to make TV shows starring real adults these days?
Anyway, back on topic. Some other factoids:
- KITT is a black Shelby GT500KR (a Mustang, by any other name).
- The new KITT’s name stands for Knight Industries Three Thousand. The KITT from the original series is included in the continuity, in the sense that it was designed first, some 25 years ago.
- Will Arnett (Arrested Development) will be the voice of KITT.
- David Hasselhoff will make a guest appearance in the role of Michael Knight. (The movie’s new lead character, “Michael Tracer,” is Michael Knight’s son.)
Also, there’s a whole bunch of publicity photos here.
As a Knight Rider fan from way back, I have one question: Where’s KITT’s scanner light?
Categorized as Media, Media/Television
I suppose it could be fanwanked that “Charles Graiman” was one of Wilton Knight’s top scientists or something. They won’t do that, of course, but would it really be that hard? They’ll probably ignore the entire Knight Foundation, Devon & Co. and say that Michael Knight founded everything. It would be highly amusing if they made some sort of derogatory dig at Knight Rider 2000, now that it’ll be eight years after that monstrosity was supposed to have occurred.
It would be totally awesome if history repeated itself and this new Knight Rider (if it got picked up as a series) had to stop referring to their KITT as a “Ford Mustang” because of idiots going to car dealerships and wanting one. “Helmsman! Fire phasers at that black T-top!”
The lack of a scanner is stupid. Otherwise, nothing separates it from a normal car, exterior-wise. And what is KITT without the light bar?
I’m starting to think that these publicity photos are not going to represent the actual car seen in the show, at least not 100%. I went back to the Knight Rider replica car forums today for the first time in years, and it turns out this whole thing runs a lot deeper than I thought.
For instance, many prominent members of the community, including the leading replica parts makers, have been dealing with the production team and have contributed a lot of replica KITT parts to the studio to be used in the film. The original KITT will be making an appearance, and the studio has requested molds and electronics for the classic vox-box. I have seen some photos from the set which confirm not only the presence of a black thirdgen T-top, but the replica parts being used.
Add to this the fact that there are actually three different Mustangs used for the filming (a “hero” car, an “attack” car and a “remote” car) — and that cameras were not allowed anywhere near the interior of the gussied-up versions — and I suspect that there might actually be some kinda cool stuff hiding behind the scenes.
I was also deathly worried, due to the writer’s strike, that the film had been penned by chimpanzees. Apparently, though, the script was written and approved before the strike was called.
I’m hopeful this will turn out to be something pretty fun to watch.
But one thing’s for sure, they are going to have to drop Knight Rider 2000 from the continuity. This movie was undoubtedly written as if both KR2000 and TKR (shudder) never happened. Which is certainly for the best.