Autoblog

Click above for high-res pic of the actual KITT F-150

Mike Levine from Pickuptrucks.com recently spoke with Knight Rider Executive Producer Gary Scott Thompson and got the skinny on KITT's new ability to transform himself (seriously, I just called it a "him") from a 2008 Shelby GT500KR to a 2009 Ford F-150 FX-4. The idea for having KITT morph into a truck came to Thompson when he needed his main character and that week's damsel in distress to make a quick getaway without KITT having to stop for them to get in, so he imagined the car as a pickup. This way the characters could hop right in its bed (we see this happen in the new clip that was released by NBC), though we're unsure how they survive the metal origami that turns KITT back into a car. We also disagree with Thompson when he alludes to the GT500KR being "about the same mass" as the F-150, but he feels justified in taking this direction with KITT after consulting with "futurists" at Microsoft who predict that vehicles will change their shape to suit our needs by 2030. We don't know what being a futurist entails, but we're not inclined to believe ones employed by Microsoft who failed to predict the backlash against Vista, how bad the Zune would sell or that the entire first batch of XBox 360s would fail. Clairvoyants they are not.

Though the rendering at right reveals KITT F-150 was originally designed to bear a bigger resemblance to the GT500KR on which the car is based, it's ended up being just a blacked-out F-150 FX-4 with KITT's signature red light bar above and behind the top bar of the grille. That should make it easy for fanboys to recreate with their own 2009 F-150s though, because we just know sales of the truck are going to skyrocket after the new season of Knight Rider begins.


[Source: Pickuptrucks.com]

We all know what a disaster the 2-hour Knight Rider movie was (click here for a refresher). Regardless, the return of the series has been green lit for the Fall and Shadowy Flight recently sat down for an interview with Gary Scott Thompson, Executive Producer and Showrunner of the series. Thompson's credentials include creating the show Las Vegas and the original Fast and the Furious movie, and he also points out that he had nothing to do with the 2-hour Knight Rider movie that aired in February. The show's new EP revealed that he and his writers are leaving the 2-hour movie in the past. His new writing staff, which includes writers from Lost, Prison Break and Smallville, but also Walker, Texas Ranger and Charmed, is dealing with some of those plot points introduced in the movie that now can't be ignored, but are basically going to start all over again with the first episode.

You can check out the two-part interview by hitting the source link below, but the major bit of news revealed is that Turbo Boost will again be part of KITT's arsenal, though the technology will be reinvented for this era where fast cars that jump aren't all that mind blowing. Thompson also told Shadowy Flight that the overly winged Attack Mode KITT is being redone and will be different than the one seen in the movie. Finally, Thompson compares his Knight Rider series that's still in gestation to one of our favorite shows on TV, Battlestar Galactica. Both are reinventions of older TV shows, but BG is currently the shining light of modern television, while Knight Rider has gotten off to an extremely rough start. We hope it compares to the weekly trials of Admiral Adama and the crew of Galactica, but we're not holding our breath. Thanks for the tip, Neil!


[Source: Shadowy Flight]