New "Knight Rider" Series Not To Be Based On Pilot

For those of you who were hoping that the Knight Rider series remake would be better than what was widely considered the terrible two-hour pilot will now have a reason to cheer up. It looks like the series itself isn’t going to be based on the pilot.

For whatever reason NBC decided to greenlight the series despite our objections here at Pop Critics. Perhaps they listened to some of our ideas after all, however, and decided that they could still make a decent show because they went out and hired Gary Scott Thompson as the Executive Producer and showrunner.

Gary Scott Thompson is a self proclaimed motorhead who brought us Vegas on NBC as well as the movie The Fast and the Furious. Thompson, it seems, actually has some professional ethics. When NBC asked him what he thought of the pilot he questioned their sanity in asking if they really wanted to know that or not. He basically said that the movie did not advance anything about the mythos of the show and the series would need to be reinvented.

The only thing he really did like about the pilot was the fact that it ended in a way that will allow him to take the series in a new direction. He actually told the studio that he will take the show in the direction he feels necessary to maintain his credibility. How often do you hear something like that? It sounds like maybe he’s really going to try to do something with the thing.

To help him out he’s bringing in 7 to 8 writers, some of whom he’s worked with before. The writers he’s bringing in have worked on shows ranging from Crossing Jordan and Charmed to Lost, Prison Break, and the first couple seasons of Smallville (which are supposedly the best).

Thompson will be writing the first episode himself. He plans to make the story such that you won’t have had to seen the two hour pilot in order to get involved in the series itself. He wants to grab the audience’s attention, get old fans back on board, and get the new fans to stick around.

They start shooting in June.