Why Knight Rider?

Hasselhoff Skien Comes to Big Screen
Tuesday May 9 11:44 AM ET
The Weinstein Co. has picked up the feature rights to the '80's series Knight Rider from show creator Glen A. Larson.
By Mark Umbach, FilmStew.com

Everybody's favorite TV actor, well, at least Germany's favorite TV actor, David Hasselhoff, must be so proud. The actor, who recently found out DreamWorks will be bringing an adaptation his Baywatch to theatres, will soon see another of his characters brought to the big screen. Indie shingle The Weinstein Co. has picked up feature rights to Hasselhoff starrer Knight Rider from show creator Glen A. Larson, and the company now has an eye toward adapting the series for the big screen.

Hasselhoff spent the mid-'80s cruising around the small screen as Michael Knight, with his talking car KITT, in the cop series Knight Rider. The show centered on an injured cop who had been left to die. He is nursed back to health by a mysterious millionaire who gives the cop a new name, face and all sorts of high-tech gadgets, including his car KITT, to help fight crime.

The show ran from 1982 through 1986 on NBC and earned Hasselhoff the People's Choice Award as Favorite Male Performer in a New Television Series for the show's first season. No casting decisions for the feature have been made, but David Price, who brought the idea to The Weinstein Co., will be a co-producer.

The Weinstein Co. recently picked up the feature rights to TV's Welcome Back, Kotter as a star vehicle for Ice Cube, and they are also developing The Equalizer for the big screen. One can only hope that the studio does a better job with Knight Rider than was recently done with the likes of The Dukes of Hazzard and Bewitched, to name a few.

I remember The Equalizer; the show was all right, too bad it only lasted 4 seasons or so. Edward Woodward (from Breaker Morant) plays the main character. It's been a while since I've seen the show, so I barely remember the details. He was originally in some intelligence agency (MI5 or MI6? or was it the CIA?), but retired to become a guy to turn to if you're in trouble. The show had some violence, but it wasn't as bad as, say, 24. As the news article points out, a lot of other remakes have done poorly at the box office.

It's been a while since I've seen Breaker Morant--a very good movie, with Aussies. Now if I could only find a woman with a cute Aussie accent. Lots of Aussies working in Hollywood... for some reason the Australian accent does not bother me as much as, say, the Cockney. I also like the S. African accent... such as that of Patsy Kensit (Lethal Weapon 2).

Anyway, does anyone really want to see a Knight Rider movie? I can understand why DH wants to produce a Baywatch movie. But a movie about a talking car? Maybe they can update it so KITT no longer runs on gas. (Not sure if it did in the first place.) "Michael, we need a flexfuel engine so we can cut down on America's reliance on oil imports and stop supporting terrorists." How's that for a computerized conscience?

The article has rightly pointed out the box office failures of other TV shows adapted for the silver screen. And there is plenty of others--a live-action Transformers? The A-Team? Dallas?It's all so ridiculous. Hollywood is really scraping the bottom of the barrel of creativity. (At least Michael Mann is the one doing Miami Vice, and it's more of a remake than anything else, since he wanted it to be more 'realistic.') Maybe they will make a TV reunion movie for Remington Steele or Moonlighting (since Cybil Shephard doesn't have much else to do besides playing Martha Stewert).

I wonder what more Korean cinema has to offer...

Whoopi Goldberg to Host Radio Show
By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer Tue May 9, 1:29 AM ET
LOS ANGELES - Call it Radio Free Whoopi.

Whoopi Goldberg announced Monday she'll be joining the growing ranks of radio voices this summer when she launches a live, syndicated program, "Wake Up With
Whoopi."

"I'm going to talk to people. People are going to talk to me. I'm going to be singing and dancing in my chair. I'm going to wake people up," Goldberg told The Associated Press by phone. "I want to have a good time in the morning and I want everyone who wakes up with me to have a good time."

The show will air weekday mornings from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., said John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio. He didn't indicate which markets it would be in when it debuts July 31.

Besides taking calls and doing comedy bits, Goldberg said she'll be playing music, adding she hopes she'll be allowed to select some of her own.

"I've got all kinds of great wonderful things on my iPod," she said. "Everything from Shaggy to Pavarotti to Hogan said Goldberg will bring a much-needed female voice to morning radio, although the actress warned that she won't yell at people. Her radio idol, after all, is veteran oldies rock DJ Cousin Brucie.

She hosted a TV talk show in the 1990s, but Goldberg, who won an Academy Award for her role in the film "Ghost," has never done radio.

"It's something I always wanted to do. I just really didn't have the opportunity before this presented itself," she said. "It came along just at the right time, and I think it will be a great deal of fun."

Well, it's somewhat surprising that if she was interested in doing radio, she didn't end up on Al Franken's Air America when it first started up. I caught an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent with her, she played a foster mother who uses her children for criminal activity. (It was also an episode with Chris Noth, who has reprised his role of Det. Mike Logan for this L&O spinoff. He is doing 1/2 the season with Annabella Sciorra as his partner; Vincent D'Onofrio and Katherine Erbe are doing the other 1/2. It's good to see Logan back, though one misses the kind of banter he had with his previous partners. And he doesn't have as many weird quirks as D'Onofrio's character.)

Anyways, does Ms. Goldberg have a radio voice? Give me Vivian Chow any day---at least she has a pleasant voice and won't pretend to know anything about politics. (While her Cantonese isn't pure, it asn't as bad as that of other HK celebs.) HKers are not immune from speaking beyond their expertise, and non-Americans love to criticize the current administration.