Knight Rider Learns Its Lessons From Bionic Woman

[Brian Damage]

Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, said that the network took the lessons it learned the hard way from its failed reboot Bionic Woman and applied them to the upcoming remake of Knight Rider.

Bionic Woman started off well, then sputtered out creatively and in the ratings, and it was not renewed for a second season. NBC conceded that the rush to get the show on air ultimately hurt it.

Moving forward with Knight Rider after the success of a backdoor pilot that aired in February, the network elected to take its time with the weekly version, a sequel to the original 1980s series that starred David Hasselhoff.

"We saw it with [Fox's] Terminator [The Sarah Connor Chronicles], and we saw it with Bionic Woman: big openings, big branded titles, draw open the tent, and the show didn't deliver on that $10 million pilot," Silverman said in response to a SCI FI Wire question during the network's upfront presentation to advertisers in New York on April 2. "What we're doing with Knight Rider is we consciously delivered it on air [in February] so that we had nine months to make sure that series is great."

To wit, Silverman said, NBC recently tapped Gary Scott Thompson as the Knight Rider show runner. Thompson most recently was show runner on NBC's hit series Las Vegas, and he also knows from cars--having scripted The Fast and the Furious--and from SF, having penned the story for Hollow Man.

"We just brought on [Thompson] to be our partner on it creatively," Silverman said. "We're hiring a staff. We're hiring the cast. We're honing the writing crew. And we're ensuring that the show lives up to the audience's expectation. The audience turned on and tuned in to the two-hour movie premiere. Now we need to make sure they come in week in and week out, and for that we've got to take a rigorous approach."

Knight Rider will premiere in the fall.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index...ory=1&id=51674

[Ireneparalegal]

"NBC condeded that the rush to get the show on air ultimately hurt it."

Um, no. It was a piece of crap. That's why it is best to leave remakes alone. Apparently Ben Silverman didn't learn the whole lesson.

[tv star collector]

To me, every remake of a classic TV show (whether as a new television series or as a theatrical motion picture) has been a failure for one simple (and
obvious) reason: it is totally superfluous and will invariably be compared to
the original show .. and will invariably come up short by comparison. Even
the "reunion" shows (which are, admittedly, interesting if only to see how much the cast members have changed over the years) are never as good as
the original episodes. The only justification for a remake is if it is done in a
totally different manner (e.g., "The Flintstones," "Rocky & Bullwinkle" and
"Alvin & the Chipmunks" in live-action); and, even then, the remake pales next
to its inspiration. But Hollywood will keep churning out these products because, apparently, they have run out of original ideas for movies and TV
shows and their only recourse is to plagiarize the past.

[nostalgicgirl93]

this show is not going to work if KITT is a mustang.