Can the Cobra Kai guys really make a new Knight Rider work? Remember that 2008 reboot?
Is the third (or fourth or fifth) time the charm for Knight Rider?
Fresh off turning the Karate Kid franchise into a Netflix hit, the creative team of Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald are turning their attention to everyone’s favorite super-car secret agent.
The trades are reporting a new Knight Rider project is on the way, working under the 87North Productions banner so you know it’ll have all the action chops. If you’re unfamiliar, 87North has worked on Bullet Train, The Fall Guy, and the last couple of John Wick films. So these dudes know how to do action and do it right.
Turning that creative partnership loose on Knight Rider sounds like one of the best chances to get it right. Though it was a bit of a box office dude, The Fall Guy movie was pretty great - a clever spin on reviving a classic action TV show. Just keep that playbook, add in some of that Cobra Kai modernization charm, and there’s every chance this could work.
But the real issue is… do audiences really want a new Knight Rider? It’s a fair question. In the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of a smart car solving crimes was fun and novel. Now we have cars that can drive themselves while we watch reruns of The Office, so it’s not all that far-fetched. That said, they modernized Cobra Kai and The Fall Guy in clever and unexpected ways - who’s to say they can’t crack Knight Rider? At least, I wouldn’t be against them.
But that last Knight Rider reboot? Yea… that didn’t work
You can be forgiven for forgetting, but this new reboot isn’t the first time the studio has tried to bring KITT back for another round of adventures. A 2008 TV reboot made it just 17 episodes (and a TV movie pilot). That show… did not go over well.
It suffered from that mid-2000s clunky CGI sci-fi action reboot vibe, and the network reduced the episode count midway through the run due to flagging ratings. The show was also retooled midstream, which made it even more of a mixed bag. Val Kilmer did provide the voice work for KITT, though, which was one very cool wrinkle.
But overall the project is a cautionary tale for how not to handle this big screen reboot. Thankfully, the show flopped so quickly it wasn’t around long enough to leave much of a bad taste in viewers mouths as far as the franchise’s legacy.
The concept is a fun one, and with this creative team finding a way into it, this could be the breakout hit that The Fall Guy should’ve been (seriously, watch that movie if you missed it the first time around).