The lucky folks over at Knight Rider Online have been invited back onto the set of the currently-filming season finale, Exit Light, Enter Knight, and had an opportunity to speak to the cast and crew about what we can expect from the remaining episodes after the reboot, and NBC’s worrying decision to bring production to an early finish.
“The show is not cancelled,” Gary Scott Thompson tells them. “We’re doing a reboot, and a lot of people don’t know this but NBC cut a lot of costs by cutting episodes on a lot of shows, but also laid off 750 people in their production offices and their other offices, so this is a cost cutting measure, not a cancellation measure.” Thompson encourages fans of the show to write in to the network to show their support for Knight Rider.
“We’re making [the show] more like the original one,” Justin Bruening says of the reboot. “The natural progression of the story is that it just becomes more like the original. It’s K.I.T.T. and I, and we’re on the road and I’m the only person K.I.T.T. really needs. I drive around, I find a mission, I solve it. It’s smaller crimes, you know, I’m not trying to save the world each week.”
Writers Rachel Mellon and Teresa Huang agree. “It’s very exciting,” Rachel explains. “It’s more like the original where it’s a guy in a car saving the world, or saving the little guy, depending on the week and the writer.” Teresa Huang adds, “I think it’s really going to bring a lot to the show because it’s simplifying all the elements. We thought very big at the beginning of the show, and I think we saw that it’s really the smaller stories, the saving the guy of the week, saving the everyman that’s exciting to us.”
One episode that fans are anxiously waiting for is the twelfth installment, Knight to King’s Pawn, which features the return of K.A.R.R. Justin can’t hide his excitement over it: “He’s a scary mofo, let me tell you,” Justin says. “It’s epic, it’s huge. It’s bigger than [the season finale]. I can’t say anything because it might give it away… I’m just gonna tell you it’s K.I.T.T. Vs. K.A.R.R. That’s it. And that’s not even the big part of it.” He describes the showdown as being “like 20 rounds with Tyson, it’s awesome. Take the original K.I.T.T. Vs. K.A.R.R. and multiply that by a thousand, it’s nuts. And I’m stuck in the middle of it.”
The finale looks to be filled with action: a beat-up Justin says that he is involved in several fight sequences and rides a motorcycle, while around 4000 rounds of ammunition were expended in an exterior scene involving K.I.T.T.!
Knight Rider Online: GST Says KR NOT Cancelled