On the heels of yesterday's post about the revival of David Hasselhoff that's gradually becoming unbearable comes the news that NBC is pushing ahead with a remake of the show that put him on the map: Knight Rider is coming back with Doug Liman producing (and possibly directing) the two-hour telepic the network is planning on airing later this season, to be followed by a series in the fall if it's a success. Like the original show, the new Knight Rider will still follow the adventures of "a single man fighting for justice with the help of his superadvanced car," but they'll also be battling "evil" vehicles, something the original only did for those couple of episodes where KITT squared off against KARR. Furthermore, there's the possibility we'll be seeing cars that "shift shapes," since the success of Transformers reportedly had a role in the remake's inspiration. While this is obviously big news for both '80s fetishists and any band who has a song with the words "road" or "drive" in it, the real winners here are—as always—the advertisers:
There's also huge potential for advertiser integration. General Motors was all over Transformers, and it's easy to see NBC striking a rich deal with a single automaker to serve as the exclusive auto brand for the new Knight. It's understood preliminary talks have already begun.
Remakes, gross product placement, David Hasselhoff—I hit the Newswire easy target trifecta!