In a world of reboots and revivals, any classic television series seems to ripe for a comeback. David Hasselhoff seems to hoping lightning could strike for the fourth or fifth time for Knight Rider, sharing his thoughts for a gritty return to the character he made famous in the ’80s. His inspiration comes from a successful source, Hugh Jackman’s triumphant closing role as Wolverine in Logan.
Contrary to rumors that a possible Knight Rider reboot could be a comedy starring Kevin Hart as K.I.T.T. and John Cena as either Michael Knight or some sort of successor to Hasselhoff’s role. If the Hoff has his way, though, we’ll be seeing a return for Knight and he’s not the pleasant fellow he used to be according to CinemaBlend:
I have met Robert Rodriguez. He does Dusk til Dawn and Machete. And I said ‘You need to do Knight Rider.’ Because he was doing a marathon of Knight Riders and he said ‘Can we have a selfie!?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t want a selfie! I want to do the movie! I want to shoot the TV series! I want to bring it back and make it dark! Michael Knight comes back and he’s pissed.’ … I hope it happens, and if it does, it’ll be kind of like Logan. It will be dark. Hasselhoff as Michael Knight in 2017. Knight Rider. The saga continues.
All of this sounds interesting, but you’d have to think “gritty Knight Rider” loses out to “Kevin Hart and John Cena in Knight Rider” in your typical Hollywood executive’s mind. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t get both. If you look up Knight Rider on IMDB, you’ll see at least four attempts to either update the adventures of K.I.T.T. and Michael Knight. This includes the failed 2008 sequel/reboot with Val Kilmer as the voice of K.I.T.T., two attempts to bring the series into the future, and a second reboot from 1998 featuring an entire team of talking cars.
While the failures of the CHiPs film should be a warning sign to any possible films looking to revive old television series on the big screen, there’s always hope that a movie about a talking car will find success. If there was some way to get an ape sidekick tossed in there somewhere, you might be looking at least even money at the box office.
We’ll just have to wait and see if a grittier David Hasselhoff will return to the role with some help from Robert Rodriguez. If anything, he’ll hopefully get at least a cameo in anything that’s produced.
