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Network: NBC
Premiere: Wednesday, September 24, 8pm
Cast: Justin Bruening, Denna Russo, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Bruce Davison, Yancey Arias, Paul Campbell, Val Kilmer
Premise: KITT is a car that is equipped with weapons, artificial intelligence, the ability to transform into other vehicles, and the voice of Val Kilmer. Iraq War vet Mike Traceur (Justin Bruening) takes the car on action-packed adventures while his team of tech geeks help him from a secret location.
If you weren't a fan of the
Knight Rider TV movie that aired back in February, fear not -- the series promises to be a completely different animal. Many of the same cast members are back, including Justin Bruening as Mike Traceur and Val Kilmer as the voice of KITT, but things are a lot different behind the scenes. Producer Gary Scott Thompson (
Las Vegas) has come on board to oversee the series, and he took a look at the first season of the original
Knight Rider for inspiration on how to update the concept. Traceur will now be backed by a team of brilliant tech geeks that will add much-needed humor to the series, and KITT will be given some new upgrades, including a turbo boost.
Aside from these changes, fans can also look forward to a deeper mythology for the new version of
Knight Rider. On the original series, Michael Knight, played by David Hasselhoff, was a man who had a new face, a new identity, and no option to go back to his normal life. In the updated version, Traceur is an Iraq war vet who participated in dangerous black ops missions during his time in the military. Not only will the series explore what happened to Michael while he was in Iraq, but his past is destined to come back to haunt him. Thompson has stated that his goal is to put Traceur in the same difficult situation that Knight faced, which will eventually force him to assume the identity of Michael Knight.
Can the new
Knight Rider possibly please fans of the original while also drawing in millions of viewers who never watched the Hasselhoff version? NBC certainly hopes so, but we won't know for sure until the series premieres on September 24.
- Don Williams, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of NBC)