Justin Lin, the director of ‘The Fast and Furious’ and ‘Star Trek Beyond’, is behind the Knight Rider remake

The world’s ‘coolest car’ is about to return to the roads!

No, not the Lamborghini Veneno; that’s easily available at the small price of £4.5 million.

Star Trek Beyond director and Fast and the Furious franchise director/producer Justin Lin is set to reboot Knight Rider through his production company YOMYOMF alongside NBCUniversal. The series is planned to debut in 2017 on digital platform Machinima; best known for video game spin-offs Mortal Kombat:Legacy 2 and Street Fighter:Assassins Fist.

Created and produced by Glen A Larson, the original Knight Rider ran for four seasons from 1982 to 1986. For entirely contrived and convoluted reasons, billionaire Wilton Knight rescues Detective Lieutenant Michael Long after he receives a gunshot wound to the face, pays for his plastic surgery and provides him with a new identity: Michael Knight. Lucky guy. The catch was that Michael would be the primary field agent of FLAG (Foundation of Law and Government) alongside the Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT); a sleek car with a chatty AI. Together the duo travelled the US making a difference to the lives of ordinary people, taking in: corrupt officials, drug dealers, spies, assassins and terrorists. KITT once went head-to-head with a truck armed with rockets, but never got to race the Batmobile. Shame.

Knight Rider

Knight Rider 2000 arrived in 1991 when Y2K was still a bit of a mystery, the TV film predicted that police officers would only use non-lethal stun guns and prisoners would be held in cryonic suspension instead of incarcerated behind bars. None of that happened, obviously. But Michael and KITT managed to put a stop to a murderous former cop; so that was one in the win column. Knight Rider 2010 didn’t really have anything to do with the franchise’s established mythology apart from the title, a talking car and a man on a mission. The last semi-successful entry in the never ending catalogue of Knight Rider spin-offs was Team Knight Rider otherwise known as Thunderbirds with trucks, cars and motorbikes. Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond just missed out on the teams try-outs; probably for the best. Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc weren’t invited.

Then the 2008 reboot happened.

The concept sounds so unimpressive in a world where self-parking vehicles exist; so bubble shaped, solar powered automobile killers following orders from Skynet have to be on the reboots’ ‘must have’ list. Right?

Machinima CEO Chad Gutstein said of the planned reboot:“Knight Rider is an iconic franchise whose concepts of AI and autonomous vehicles were science fiction in the 1980s and are now science fact…Justin is one of the leading storytellers of his generation and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with him on re-invigorating Knight Rider for a new generation of fans.”

At least for fans there is the small glimmer of hope that the franchise cannot fall any lower than the unmentionable 2008 reboot. Nothing could ever match the horror of that particular car crash, unless Chris Evans were to replace David Hasselhoff in the driver’s seat.

Details about cast, plot, and production are yet to be revealed.

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Film and TV Journalist Follow: @widgewidge Follow: @filmandtvnow