NBC has once again dusted off its Knight Rider franchise, this time putting Gary Scott Thompson in the driver's seat.
As the writer behind big-screen hit The Fast and the Furious, Thompson knows a thing or two about cars and, even more significant, the audience that likes them. Following the network's two-hour TV movie that played more like a Ford commercial than it did a creative venture earlier this year, Thompson has been brought on board to once again revitalize the kitschy 1980 series. Job No. 1: Scrap nearly everything that came before him.
Thompson spoke to Forbes.com about where General Electric-owned (nyse: GE - news - people ) NBC's first remake attempt went wrong, how much is too much when it comes to product placement and where his network bosses wouldn't let him take the show.
Forbes.com: When viewers tune in for the series premiere tonight, they'll see the drastic changes you made to NBC's first remake attempt. Where do you feel the two-hour pilot missed?
Thompson: I think the biggest thing was the technology. It just didn't seem like technology had advanced much in the 25 years since the original series aired. In the real world, it has advanced tremendously. Cars are actually talking to you now. My kids said to me, "Big deal, our car talks to us." That was sort of a taking off point, and the question is answered in the first episode when the car says: "Yes, but can your car do this?"
But we've had to make lots of other changes too. We brought in three new characters and we have new back story--or at least embellished back story--for our other characters. We've also changed the car so that it can transform into other vehicles.
How have you balanced catering to fans of the old series while simultaneously reinventing the show for new viewers?
It's a very fine line to walk, and no matter what you do you end up pissing off somebody. A lot of people remember the old series fondly and nostalgically and they forget it was a different time and a different time period. I would tell any of them to go back and look at it again, because it doesn't necessarily hold up in all cases.
And then there's a whole generation of people who have never seen any of it. Anybody under 30, almost--and that's a generation that grew up on video games and very fast-paced movies like Transformers or the Bourne movies.
Also, everyone seems to forget we don't work in a vacuum here. We have to report to a studio and a network, which will and will not let us do certain things. And there was some stuff in the first hour that they made us take out that I fought tooth and nail to keep in.
Such as?
It was more on Mike [Knight's] past--there were flashbacks as he tried to regain his memory and figure out what had happened to him. They made me take those out because they thought they were too dark. I think that has to do with Bionic Woman. They thought [that remake] was too dark, which is why they believe it failed.
And NBC has been very vocal about being this sort of optimistic, escapist-themed network.
Yes. And we're on in the family hour, which we've had beaten into us for the last six months. People forget that we do have to report [to] a lot of bosses and that it's not always what we wish to do. Some of the routes we go are not always the ones we wish to take. But, by and large, we're just trying to make something that's fun and enjoyable ... pure entertainment.
Look, there are a lot of haters out there. There are haters that hated the original one and still hate this one. There are a lot of critics that hated it too. ... Unfortunately for critics, they actually don't have their pulse on the populous--if they did, Arrested Development would still be on and Battlestar Galactica would be the biggest hit on TV.
Having read the TV movie's harsh reviews--even criticizing it yourself--why did you chose to get involved in the series?
I looked at it, and everything they said they wanted to do I sort of agreed with. And I thought there was a way to do something that wasn't on TV. Whether you love it or hate it, there's nothing like it on TV.
Meaning?
I'm speaking to the pace, to the visual effects and to the all out fun. One reviewer said, "This is never going to be fillet mignon, but it's a double cheese burger and a cold beer on a hot summer day and I'll take that any time." And that's sort of what it was meant to be. It was meant to be an eight o'clock show that you can watch with your family and have fun.
It wasn't meant to be Law & Order or CSI, there are enough of those. This is to [NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios Co-Chairman] Ben Silverman's credit. He said: "I already have enough shows that nobody watches that are critical successes. I need shows that people are actually going to show up and watch."
This is Silverman's first scripted series to hit the air and will likely be even more scrupulously judged as a result. Is that added pressure for you?
Nah.
Your show is in many ways a test for him.
It's his show. I mean, he wanted it on. It was his nostalgia. He's the one that remembered it from when he was a kid and wanted it on. And its success is ultimately up to the ratings gods, anyway. We made what we thought was a fun, good product. But if we could gauge the appetite of the audience, we'd make a hit every time.
You wrote the first two Fast and the Furious flicks. What from that experience have you brought to this show?
There isn't a TV parallel to some of the summer popcorn movies. That was a popcorn movie--you go, eat your popcorn, sit on the edge of your seat, have fun and that's it. You're not being beaten over the head with a message; there is no message, its just pure fun. And there's nothing like that on TV right now. There are a lot of message shows and other shows: crime of the week or rape of the week or reality. So that is another one of the things I think they wanted me to bring to this, and we'll find out if I succeeded.
One of the major criticisms of the two-hour movie was it felt like a big car commercial.
That was a big criticism of mine as well. I went into it saying you can't do that again.
Do you fear they'll say the same about the series?
I do fear it, and I fight that every day. I say, "Look, if you just let me do a really cool show about a car, people will love your car. If you shove something down their throats they're going to hate everything." That's why when we did this attack-mode car, I had it changed. There is no Ford that looks like that. It's its own car, and that was important to me. But on the flipside, it's a show about a car. So we have to have a car and we have to have vehicles in there. Nobody criticized the original because GM was supplying the Trans Am.
And, by the way, I agree that the two-hour [movie] was a big Ford commercial. Even the guys from Ford were sort of embarrassed by it. You didn't know where the show ended and the commercials began. Yeah, it wasn't good. I didn't have anything to do with that. [Laughs]
Within the creative community, there are those who shun product placement for its creative intrusion and others who accept and even embrace it for its financial upside. Where do you fall?
We use products every day, so I say why wouldn't we have products? It's very disturbing when it's clearly a product placement. But it's also disturbing to me when they hold up something that's not real, like Fudweiser instead of Budweiser. That takes me out of reality too. So I think there's a happy medium between there, and in order to pull this off you need to have the support of the sponsors. I just think the best way to do it is to let the creative people at this end figure out how to make it work as opposed to try to shove a commercial into an hour program. That's when I start to gag.
