"Knight Rider": The Movie!
Revolution Studios is gearing up to revive Knight Rider--NBC's cult hit 1980's action series featuring Hasselhoff as the titular crimefighter aided by his trusty talking Trans Am KITT--for a potential big-screen franchise.
Hasselhoff is on board to executive produce the flick with series creator Glen Larson. There's no word yet what kind of screen time, if any, Hasselhoff will have.
Hasselhoff has been trying to jumpstart the project for a while. Last September, he told E! Online, "I'm really excited about it. We're working hard to get it off the ground."
When Hasselhoff first started shopping the new Knight Rider around, it was reported that his character, Michael Knight, would be a supporting player, acting as mentor to a new generation of younger (and presumably hotter) operatives. A Revolution spokesperson, however, says the story still needs to be hashed out and the stars need to be cast.
"Right now we just bought the pitch, and no script has been written, so [Hasselhoff's] involvement or what he's going to do is up in the air," said the spokeswoman. "But once we get the other cast down then we'll kind of work the script around him."
Larson is currently hammering out a script that will update Knight Rider to appeal to The Fast and the Furious set.
"It's going to be a big action film," says the Revolution rep. "[Larson] is going to write the script but obviously it's not a remake of the TV show."
To that end, the studio plans to overhaul the black Trans Am (originally voiced by St. Elsewhere star and former Screen Actors Guild president William Daniels) and refurbish the story to appeal to a more high-octane, teen-male market.
"There will be a lot of gadgets and a lot of toys [in KITT]," the studio spokesperson adds. In the original series, the souped-up sports car was equipped with enough options to make a car salesman drool and James Bond jealous. The Trans Am could travel upwards of 300 miles per hour and used its turbo boost to jump through the air. It also had infrared X-ray, audio-video recording capabilities, mircrowave jamming, chemical and blood analyzers, ejection seats, oil jets, a smokescreen, flame thrower and a grappling hook.
The original Knight Rider featured Hasselhoff as a young undercover cop who, after getting shot in the face, is recruited by a dying billionaire's secret Foundation for Law and Government to battle the baddies. He gets a new identity via plastic surgery, a new name and a new ride. Hasselhoff and his garrulous car entertained audiences for four seasons before NBC axed the show in 1986.
It wasn't exactly the end of the line for Hasselhoff, who not only became a hit singer in Germany but also produced and starred in Baywatch, for a time the most popular TV show on the planet.
While there's no Baywatch feature in sight (gasp!), a TV reunion featuring Hasselhoff's hunky lifeguard Mitch and other Baywatch hardbodies is in the works.
As for Knight Rider, Revolution will coproduce the movie with Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray of Mayhem Pictures, the partners behind Disney's upcoming Dennis Quaid baseball drama, The Rookie, and Sony's spring teen flick The New Guy.
Hasselhoff & Co. hope to get the new Knight Rider up and running on the big screen by 2004.
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