Terminator Salvation came to theaters on May 21st.  It sparked an idea in my head about technology in our society and if it’s really possible get to the point of what the Terminator franchise projects for our future.

When I presented the idea to a co-worker, he dissed it immediately. When a scientist or engineer starts to immediately diss the possibility of an idea, it’s a good clue that it might be a good idea for us to wrap our imaginations around. Hence, the birth of this article.

This was going to be a short piece… but unfortunately, like the technology in Terminator, the more I looked into the subject matter, the more the article grew on me. It got bigger than the original idea. It took me over and I found myself inexorably abducted into having to write it.

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This week’s weekly TV report from April 30th, 2009 chats a little about Chuck’s sandwich run, the probable return of Fringe, a new character for Burn Notice and how Harper’s Island is not only sinking, but moving - much like the island on Lost!  We’ve also got some syndication news on My Own Worst Enemy, Knight Rider and Dollhouse.  Yep, syndication news on Dollhouse.  That can’t be good.  Read on folks!

Chuck Takes Fans To Subway

Though they feel they’re currently on the good side of the ratings / cancel bubble, the cast of Chuck are still trying to take care of their sponsors.

While the cast was attending a Starfury convention T1 event in Birmingham, U.K., a fan suggested they try to help the show by supporting a sponsor, in this case, Subway. Zachary Levi and Adam Baldwin (who else would have done this?) then asked those in attendance if they’d follow them to a local Subway. Sure enough, they ended up leading about 400 convention attendees to the poor beleaguered sandwich shop. That would have sucked to be the guy behind the counter when this unruly gang showed up!

So what’s happening this week with some of our favorite television shows? I’ll fill you in on the vaporizing ratings for Dollhouse, The Sarah Connor Chronicles and others. I touch on some Supernatural & NCIS casting news and a season ending story development. I then sprinkle some CSI:NY bits and round it out with some Lily cast updates.

Let’s check it out.

It was a busy news week for some big shows and some other shows that aren’t so big… so let’s get on with the tidbits of news!

NBC’s Day One

NBC is pulling together a post-apocalyptic drama called Day One. It’s about a group of neighbors from an apartment complex after a catastrophic event. The cast includes David Lyons, Carly Pope, Adam Campbell and Thekla Reuten.

So will NBC give this a chance? They’ve nabbed Heroes ex-writer Jesse Alexander for the task of creating this little mini Jericho. Why do I call it that? It’s about a small band of survivors who strive to rebuild society and unravel the mysteries of the disaster than took place to force them into this situation.

Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, Hollywood Reporter

PRISON BREAK:

It’s been reported that the actors of Prison Break were given notice that their schedule for filming has been extended for two additional hours, and the thoughts are that these two hours are the last two hours, wrapping up the four year series.

I mean face it, it’s called Prison Break. They got out… from 2 different prisons. Now if they renamed the show to “On the Lamb”, or “Michaels Vengeance” or “Whistler on the Roof”, maybe they could have pulled this off. Who knows.

I swear that one day I’ll get this out on a Wednesday.

This week:

Dick Donner talks The Goonies 2; the film version of The Road may be delayed until 2009; Ron Shelton and Tim Robbins talk Bull Durham 2; Sam Raimi’s Sleeper gets a writer and Kight Rider and The Sarah Connor Chronicles get more scripts.

Well… I just watched the online series/season premiere of NBC’s reboot of Knight Rider. I know the term “reboot” has been overused of late, but in this case it truly applies. Exactly 7 months ago to the day, NBC unveiled a pilot/TV movie of a new version of the well-known Knight Rider TV series from the 1980s. While I thought it was extremely cornball, it had enough nods to the original series to soften me up a little bit and not totally rip it.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Watch the full season premiere episode of Knight Rider online a full week before it airs on NBC - today.

NBC has releasing the episode on the web today, and you can watch the entire first episode of the new series right here:

The new 2008 Fall TV season is almost upon us, with the first new show of the season premiering on September 1st. Screen Rant has put together an extensive list of new and returning programs along with their premiere dates, along with descriptions and recommendations.

So what’s up this fall? What are we anticipating, what are we, well… not anticipating?

In case you wonder where I am when I’m not pestering you here on Screen Rant, I keep myself busy blogging about NASCAR. It’s always easy to figure out where I’ll be. If I’m not at the track, I’m glued in front of my TV watching auto racing, specifically, NASCAR. then Sci-Fi, then action movies, then… well you get it.

I’ve been feebly trying to sneak a NASCAR post in here from since, well, forever. I finally get to talk about it here on Screen Rant! Vic is letting me because I am sneaking it in under the umbrella of TV news. HA HA!

This morning I attended the Knight Rider Panel at Comic-Con 2008 in San Diego. The members of the panel showed up slowly throughout the scheduled hour, by no fault of their own. They had left L.A, with time to get here, but a big rig crashed in Oceanside, flipping over and bursting into flames.  The traffic backup was measured at 13 miles of bumper to bumper patience testing, so I was amazed anyone got there at all, and by the end of the panel everyonehad arrived.

Today I’m chatting about Supernatural, Virtuality, Heroes, Knight Rider, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Kind of like a grab bag!

The creator and executive producer of The CW’s show Supernatural, Eric Kripke, just signed an exclusive two year deal with Warner Brothers Television. In that deal, he will continue to run Supernatural and will be developing other projects under the contract for them.

After the movie pilot for Knight Rider came and went, Vic gave it a “Not Awesome” rating, which actually meant it didn’t completely suck. Some saw it as a great extension of the original show, while others thought it reminded them more of an older show that tried its hand at the super car genre, called Viper. (I really like Vipers, BTW)

I liked seeing the K.I.T.T. with new technology in a new car, even if we never heard what happened to the old one, but it just felt empty to me. Fun to watch, but I wasn’t compelled by any character.

The pilot had sufficient ratings to be granted a shot at a series slot on NBC, and eerily, in an earlier post, Vic said “One can only hope they get some new writers once this thing goes weekly.” It freaks me out and I put on my tin foil helmet to protect my mind from probing brain waves because it seems that NBC listened or Vic sensed something…

When the remake of The Bionic Woman bailed on ratings, it supposedly left some lessons in it’s wake that NBC hopes to apply to the upcoming remake of the 1980’s series: Knight Rider.

Rushing The Bionic Woman into production after the pilot aired hurt NBC creatively, and obviously the quality level of the show also took a hit. What is it my mom used to say? Haste makes waste? After the first episode, the ratings plummeted like swirling water in a tub. No, faster. Tub water swirls, slowing the decrease of water in the tub.

Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, said that this time around with Knight Rider, they are taking their time in putting the new, weekly series on the air.

According to Variety, NBC has decided to go ahead and approve Knight Rider as an ongoing TV series for next Fall.

It seems that the pilot had decent enough ratings to convince the powers that be to go ahead and approve the concept for a weekly series. While I didn’t exactly skewer the recent Knight Rider pilot, I didn’t exactly give it a glowing review, either. As a matter of fact, most commenters on my review said I went too easy on the two hour pilot.

This review is for last February’s two hour pilot - If you’re looking for the September Knight Rider series premiere review click here.

Let’s get just get straight to the punch line: NBC’s Knight Rider TV movie (or pilot, depending on what you’d rather call it) was not nearly as awful as I had anticipated.

Now that that’s out of the way, please don’t mistake “not as awful” for “awesome.”

I will say that one of the things I reminded myself of as I watched this with the intention of writing a review was that the original series was not exactly Citizen Kane.

Overall I would describe it as a typical mediocre TV movie punctuated with moments of awfulness.

BTW, there will be spoilers in this Knight Rider review, so you have been warned.

Oh boy… I justed watched five clips from the Knight Rider TV movie/pilot that will be airing this Sunday.

How many synonyms are there for the word awful?

Ok… let me back up and maybe try to be a bit more fair. The only scenes that were excrutiatingly painful to watch were the ones containing the fellow on the left, Justin Bruening, who plays Mike Knight, son of Michael Knight.

Holy cow is this guy awful in the role. I’m talking cringe-inducing.

Now this is pretty damned funny.

NBC’s Knight Rider “re-imagining” is only a couple of weeks away from airing, and at the 11th hour the production has had to bring him in to completely replace the voice-over work of Will Arnett.

Arnett was to be the voice of the famous crime fighting car K.I.T.T., but apparently the combined forces of K.I.T.T. and Mike Knight were not enough to beat the supervillain known as…

General Motors.

There’s a very short teaser for the new Knight Rider TV movie that NBC is floating this February, no doubt to see if the ratings are strong enough to justify an ongoing TV series. Above you’re looking at the new K.I.T.T. which we’ve talked about before. I still don’t like that they’re not using a Pontiac Firebird for this. Especially since I’m absolutely sure there’s a brand new version coming out as the sister vehicle to the new Camaro that premiered in the Transformers movie.

Anyway, the teaser is below and it’s quite short at only 15 seconds:

You’re looking at the new K.I.T.T. from the upcoming made-for-TV Knight Rider movie. No, your eyes do not deceive you: It’s a Ford Mustang. A Mustang GR500KR to be precise.

Normally I’d rag on GM for not taking advantage of this and getting a new version of their Pontiac Firebird in there. After all, in the original series the car was a Firebird, which at the time was a pretty cool looking car. However I’ll give them a pass for two reasons:

The Knight Rider TV remake continues to move forward with the announcement of casting of the lead actor: Justin Bruening.

Bruening, like David Hasselhoff was before him, is a soap opera actor. He’s jumping from “soap-opera-land” to “TV-remake-probably-going-to-suck-land.”

Interestingly (and in a surprisingly smart script move) he’s been cast as the son of the original Michael Knight. This is a far better idea than having him replace David Hasselhoff as the same character. I last wrote about the Knight Rider remake about a month ago and I still don’t think it’s a good idea. No word on whether Hasselhoff will appear on the show, but if the folks behind this have any brains between them they’ll try like hell to get him to appear. I’d say that would be good for probably doubling the ratings. I know I’d tune in just to see him play dad to this new guy.

Then again Bionic Woman is doing better than Journeyman as far as ratings, so what do I know?

Source: RopeOfSilicon

There have been plans to make a movie based on Knight Rider - the David Hasselhoff-starring TV series from the 80’s. He played Michael Knight, a lone crimefighter with a super-car that had artificial intelligence. For it’s time, it was cool for a while, but eventually it sank into a “rescue the babe of the week whose father is in danger” formula that was so popular back then.

The last I heard about the possibility of a movie being made based on the show was over two years ago, when Hasselhoff came out to shout down studio execs who wanted to put a version of the car (known as K.I.T.T.) in the movie that didn’t talk. To base a movie on a show where the main character interaction was between the hero and his super-cool talking car and not have the car talk did seem pretty stupid.

Now it seems that NBC wants to take a shot at a remake of the TV series by producing a two hour movie as a pilot.