James Gunn talks Knight Rider

Knight Rider, starring David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight, premiered 40 years ago this year. With its iconic opening theme and talking car (voiced by William Daniels), Glen A. Larson's series soon established itself as unmissable television in 1982.



A generation of children (myself included) and adults dreamed of owning their own Knight Industries Three Thousand (KITT) car in an era where home computers were coming of age. Glen A. Larson's talking car also featured an Easter egg from his Battlestar Galactica series.

Incidentally, a decade ago Netflix launched in the UK, and Knight Rider was one of the first series I streamed along with classic Doctor Who.

The series was most recently rebooted in 2008, and Nick Smith reviewed it at the time. In the intervening years, technology popularised in the original series is now available to consumers from tech titans Apple and Tesla. I can check my app-enabled BMW on my iPhone, something I never imagined would be possible when I began watching Knight Rider all those years ago.

Director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) told SlashFilm he'd like to reboot Knight Rider:

"My friend [David Hasselhoff] and I have discussed doing a modern continuation of Knight Rider many times. The primary hurdle has been there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the cool things I want to do!"

Would you like to see a reboot of Knight Rider in an era of app-enabled self-driving cars? Let me know in the comments below.

Knight Rider

Knight Rider was a pop culture phenomenon in the early eighties. Can Glen A. Larson reboot his original series in the way Ronald D. Moore rebooted Battlestar Galactica for a new generation?

Nick Smith, our US-based stellar scribe, takes new KITT for a drive.

Guest post by Nick Smith

I was looking forward to seeing the revamp of Knight Rider on NBC last night. I love driving my Ford Mustang, so I was quite happy with the make and model being used for the Knight Industries Three Thousand car (“KITT”). I was even willing to give Val Kilmer a go as the voice of KITT, and I thought a cameo by David Hasselhoff (from the original series) would be fun. The director had worked on Rome and Deadwood – he had to be a smart cookie.

I must confess, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled when the old Knight Rider theme began to play. But it was replaced within seconds by generic rock and from then on, the TV movie resembled a 2-hour car commercial: lots of shots of the tires, the windshield, the grille etc. No amount of fast cutting allowed for the fact that the director Steve Shill had forgotten to make the car chases exciting.

Worse, the storyline was dull, formulaic American TV stuff; the leads were bland, with no interesting lines to test their acting chops; and the dialogue was often drowned out by the rock music.

It’s a shame that executive producer Glen A. Larson couldn’t have taken a cue from a revamp of another of his shows, Battlestar Galactica, and added some more engaging, believable characters. The new Knight Rider was so vacuous that I didn’t stick around long enough for the Hasselhoff cameo, and Steve Shill should stay away from car porn in future...

NICK SMITH BIO
Nick Smith is a filmmaker, writer and actor. He has written screenplays (The Terror Game, Cold Soldiers); dramas and documentaries for the BBC, Sky and all other major UK networks. He wrote a year's full content for "The Property Channel" on cable and contributed to "The Medical Channel" on satellite.

Other work includes novels (the bestselling Milk Treading, The Kitty Killer Cult and Undead on Arrival), stage plays (Crime School, Foodfellas), comedy sketches, articles (The Scotsman, Charleston Magazine), radio plays and comic books. He founded and ran a production company and The Film School Scotland before moving to Charleston, South Carolina where he’s currently directing feature film and teaching writing, acting and filmmaking.