I am – Hercules!!
UPDATE!! You can now watch the entire panel for yourself: ORIGINAL POST: A Comic Con correspondent tells us the footage from the new “Knight Rider” series looks “very different” from what we saw in that awful TV-movie last February. Can the man who brought us “The Fast and The Furious” and “Las Vegas” save KITT? First, some new video: Here’s “WBeast”:

Hercules: Love Coaxial!! -- I've sent you stuff before as The WBeast so use that and not my real name. I'm down at Comicon and wanted to give you some TV-related scoop. Here's some news from the Panel and a of course there's few SPOILERS below too re: the new Knight Rider sequel/reboot. ----- Went to the KNIGHT RIDER panel Thursday morning, expecting the place to be a graveyard, since the TV movie last February got pretty big ratings but was slaughtered critically by most people who watched it, even though producer Doug Liman (B. IDENTITY, SWINGERS, MR & MRS. SMITH) seemed confident enough to put his name on this sequel/re-boot. What was shocking was that the auditorium -- one of the bigger halls at the Con -- was PACKED. Who knew there were so many Knight Rider nerds out there (myself included, sadly). Because a truck overturned between LA and San Diego, none of the cast made it to the panel initially (they all showed up later), so new showrunner Gary Scott Thompson -- best known for his writing work on "Las Vegas" and the first "Fast and the Furious" fielded questions and showed some footage that was VERY different from the Liman M.O.W./backdoor. Obvious from the outset was that the NBC ongoing series has made a TON of changes from the TV movie version. The footage: --Shows KITT transforming from a pickup truck to his Mustang mode. KITT now transforms in a "mechanical" way instead of the nano-bot "morphing" thing the car did in the TV movie. This was neat. Looks a LOT better this way, like "Transformers" on a slightly lower budget, and this actually brought the crowd to CHEERS (it was a nifty overhead getaway shot). --Despite rumors to the contrary, Val Kilmer is staying onboard as the voice of KITT and was heard extensively in the footage. --The rumored "KITTcave" was seen for the first time in the footage. It's cool looking, to a point. Best way to describe it is it looks like a Dave and Busters meets Tony Stark's garage/workshop from Iron Man. Neatest thing is that when KITT is in his "cave" he's on a gyroscope that looks like it can spin him all around in three dimensions for modifications. --KITT's cockpit has been redesigned from the TV movie. It's way more "spaceship" looking with all kinds of touchscreens and read-outs/displays. Doesn't quite have the "holy shit" factor of the old series cockpit but it looks like at least they're TRYING for that, which is a good thing. --The crowd seemed to dig how much eye candy/love interest Deanna Russo was part of the action/fighting footage they showed. It looks like she's as big a part of the weekly missions as the new Michael Knight/Traceur (soap dude Justin Bruening) is. There was a glimpse of her beating the living shit out of someone in a bar fight. --The cast has been expanded from the TV movie. Bruce Davison is still around for tech support but the big addition is a stock badass Nick Fury type played by Yancy Arias (who was on the awesome and short-lived NBC show KINGPIN a few years back). His character Alex Torres seems to be calling the shots in the KITTcave. --The action and special efffects are quite ramped up from the pilot. Choppers fire misiles at KITT and at one point the car turns into afull blown assault vehicle before being engulfed by flames. The shooting style is very reminiscent of the "Fast and the Furious movies" -The biggest surprise was that the footage was actually GOOD! The bog problem with the movie was all those boring shots of KITT driving down the highway, this stuff was much more kinetic and cut to the chase a lot faster and, uh, furiouser. Much more stuff actually shot at night and a lot more fighting with the bad guys. I went in skeptical but this could actually WORK -- because they;'ve changed the whole visual approach to the new Mustang-KItt The audience even asked to see the footage twice and the panelists obliged, so a few details may be escaping me but the point I'm getting at is that even though it's giot several of the same cast memebers this looks and feels nothing like the TV movie. The cutting is a lot fast, intense shots and the emphasis seems to be very heavily on the ACTION, which is not a bad thing at all. After the footage. the traffic-delayed cast finally arrived, including Russo (hot!) Bruening, who seems to have really buiffed-out since the TV movie and looks Hugh Jackman huge, Davison, Arias and a couple other random no-namers (KITT apparantly needs lots of techies in this series who tap away at screens at the KITTcave.). Absent were Kilmer and original Michael Knight David Hasselhoff, but Thompson assured the audience that Hoff appearances have not been ruled out for future episodes (aka sweeps). Q/A confirmed some other stuff: -KITT's transformations are much more elaborate and key to the actionthan they were in the TV movie. -Post production takes a long time on this show, which is why there was no full episode ready in time for the con. -The new cast is really getting along great (was this a dig at Hasselhoff, who has yet to film an episode with them) and they are all Knight Rider aficionados when it comes to the original show. -Turbo Boost has been revived for the series, and will thankfully include KITT actually launching into the air. -Stories will be a mix of serialized elements and mission-of-the-week stuff. -KITT will "evolve" as a sentient piece of A.I. and that's the big thrust of season one -- KITT's dawning awareness. Not sure about all that but the proof is really in the pudding, and the footage did look incredibly solid -- like they took people's complaints to heart. Sounds like they'll be showing more footage during the olympics but they really need to put this Comicon reel onYoutube or NBC.com now so everyone can check it out. -WBeast

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