Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
KNIGHT RIDER IN NEUTRAL
Toy manufacturer Hasbro is determined to create a shared universe based around its products.
It’s film-making arm, Allspark Pictures, has already brought G.I. Joe and Transformers to the big screen and is now going to focus on its lesser-known properties. Alongside movies based on M.A.S.K, Micronauts and Dungeons & Dragons, they’re also working on ROM: Spaceknight.
Zak Penn, who did the screenplay for Ready Player One, is on writing duties.
Penn is best known for his work on comic book properties like X-men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers, so he has a lot of experience in this space, and ROM: Spaceknight actually began life as a collaboration between Parker Brothers (now a subsidiary of Hasbro) and Marvel Comics.
ROM was a multimedia venture, but the comics were far more successful than the toys. The title character is a heroic cyborg from a planet called Galador which is invaded by a species called Dire Wraiths (who are an offshoot of the more famous Skrulls that plague Marvel characters).
When the Dire Wraiths destroyed the Galadorian space fleet, citizens were asked to join the Spaceknight program. ROM was the first to volunteer for the procedure, becoming more machine than man.
ROM ultimately fell to Earth and continued his battle against the Dire Wraiths on our planet. And that’s enough detail to be getting on with.
The comics outlasted the action figures by several years and throughout its run, ROM had encounters with various popular superheroes, including the X-men, Fantastic Four and the Avengers. But don’t expect any crossovers in the movie; the license eventually reverted back to Hasbro after Marvel ended the series in 1986.
The ROM character came back to comics a few years ago, but the storyline been massively streamlined. Altogether, ROM: Spaceknight is an oddity. It was a cash-grab that ended up having a fiercely loyal cult grow up around it. There’s a huge amount of complicated backstory for Penn to draw from, but when he starts writing he’d do well to avoid much of that or risk descending into a nerd pit from which he’ll never escape. Hollywood has been pushing nostalgia for years, and it shows no signs of slowing. The Highlander is being rebooted, Carmen Sandiego is getting a movie and there are more examples in the story above. However, one reboot that is struggling to get into gear is the long, long, long-mooted Knight Rider movie.
Just last year, Kevin Hart and John Cena’s names were attached to a comedic reworking of the beloved TV series (as KITT and Michael Knight, respectively), but not much has happened since.
John Cena is currently out and about promoting his new film Blockers, but did little to encourage Knight Rider fans when asked about the project: “Ehhhh, once again it takes a miracle to make a movie nowadays. It is still in the works and hopefully, it will come to fruition because the draft I read of it... I thought it was amazing.” So that’s not terribly inspiring. It’s odd, because Knight Rider isn’t a risky project, and John Cena and Kevin Hart are pretty well established, admittedly more so in the US than here. When the news came out of Cena and Hart’s possible involvement, it was reported that the film would take a comedic approach to the franchise, much like the Baywatch and CHIPS movies. A silly take on Knight Rider doesn’t exactly set my world on fire, but it’s definitely where the most money would be, so I understand why that’s the direction the studio would want to go in.
But it’s not the only version of a Knight Rider reboot that has been floated about in recent years Justin Lin (Fast & Furious, Star Trek: Beyond) was working on a digital series that the original Michael Knight, David Hasselhoff, was linked with. On the movie front, Chris Pratt has been attached to a project, and Hasselhoff himself seems to pitch something new every couple of years, from a Fast & Furious-inspired movie, to something dark and gritty like Logan. But for the time being, it sounds like the movie is in development hell. If the filmmakers are serious about making the movie though, they’d better get a move on. Self-driving cars are just around the corner, and virtual assistants like Alexa are being incorporated into even low-spec car models, so the premise of Knight Rider gets less futuristic by the day.