'Knight Rider' Movie Shifts Into High Development Gear

The concept of a talking robot car isn't as futuristic and cool as it was in 1982, but in Hollywood, the idea of a Knight Rider movie just won't die -- which is why the execs at the Weinstein Company just hired a screenwriter to try and bring the David Hasselhoff series to the big screen.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Brad Copeland, whose extraordinarily mixed list of credits includes Arrested Development as well as Wild Hogs and Yogi Bear, has scored the Knight Rider gig, with the goal of turning the famously cheesy show into a "higher-budget, more action-oriented movie than Weinstein's typical prestige fare."
As ScreenCrush notes, this isn't Knight Rider's first trip through the development process; in 2002, the project died at Revolution Studios before TWC acquired the rights in 2006 with an eye toward getting Orlando Bloom behind the wheel. Efforts to reboot the franchise haven't been successful -- NBC's new-look Knight Rider lasted an unimpressive 17 episodes -- but with the Weinsteins apparently hellbent on making this happen, it's only a matter of time before audiences are asked to buy tickets to see a brooding action hero driving a smart-aleck talking car.
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Jeff is an entertainment writer and editor whose work currently appears at a variety of sites, including Rotten Tomatoes, Paste, American Songwriter, Popdose, Dadnabbit, Diffuser, and Ultimate Classic Rock.