David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight by Paul Drinkwater/NBC/Sleuth
"Michael, I don't like the sound of this.... "NBC has put director Doug Liman in the driver's seat of a two-hour TV-movie that will reboot that '80s show Knight Rider and ideally serve as a backdoor pilot for a new series. ("No, Michael, not the back door.... ") Variety reports that the plan is to air the flick later this season, and if successful/not entirely abysmal, have a new series ready for fall 2008. Dave Andron (Raines) is penning the script and will exec-produce with Liman and Dave Bartis (Heist).The vision for this redo is to take advantage of current TV special effects to allow K.I.T.T. some Transformers-esque shapeshifting. (But no, Hoff, no amount of state-of-the-art trickery will get you your old job back.)
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ABC has greenlit production on a pilot for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, an adaptation of the big-screen thriller that, in addition to its assorted cinematic merits, introduced a boy named Brad to a girl named Angie. Doug Liman and Simon Kinberg will reprise their roles as director and scribe. Set six months after where the film left off, with the Smiths now residing in a new house in a new suburb, Kinberg likens the TV version to "Married... with Children with guns," telling the Hollywood Reporter, "It is a show about any married couple trying to balance professional and home life." Eyed for a fall 2007 slot and set to shoot in March, casting on the pilot has yet to be determined. Good luck with that. Maybe the Today's News blog readers can help Mr. Liman out with casting, what do you say? Too bad Eric Dane is busy. (But Charisma Carpenter isn't!)
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TV's Blade, Batman Begins
In Part 1 of our Q&A with David S. Goyer, the producer/writer detailed the differences and similarities between Spike TV's Blade: The Series (Wednesdays at 10 pm/ET) and its big-screen begetter. Here he shares the scoop on which other Blade characters will surface on TV, status reports on The Flash, Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider and the Batman Begins follow-up, and the sad truth about why shows such as
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Steve Harris and Dougray Scott, Heist
Tonight at 10 pm/ET, NBC lays the foundation for a major Heist with a serialized drama — directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Supremacy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and penned by Mark and Robb Cullen (FX's Lucky) — about the simultaneous robbery of three Beverly Hills jewelry stores. Leading the series' Ocean's Eleven-style rat pack of robbers are Mission: Impossible II baddie Dougray Scott as Mickey O'Neil and The Practice's Steve Harris as James "Never Jimmy" Johnson, while Seymour Cassel (as safecracker Pops), Marika Dominczyk (computer whi
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William Fichtner, Invasion
ABC's Invasion is back with a bang tonight (10 pm/ET), sharing the first of two new shocker-filled episodes... before taking a five-week break. (Do not get me started.) Still, what's ahead is super stuff, led off by this week's episode, which is fittingly titled "The Fittest." TVGuide.com enjoyed a rather candid convo with none other than shady Sheriff Tom Underlay himself, film vet William Fichtner.
TVGuide.com: Invasion is so much fun. You must be camped out by your mailbox waiting for the next script, eh?William Fichtner:
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NBC has greenlit a pilot for Heist, in which a pair of jewel thieves plot to strip Rodeo Drive of its baubles. Mr. & Mrs. Smith helmer Doug Liman will direct the first hour, which methinks the Peacock network is only producing in hopes that the crooks will get caught, thus paving the way for an inevitable spin-off bearing an uncanny resemblance to Fox's Prison Break.
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We're all connected: Matt Dillon
Question: I recently saw and loved the movie Crash, and was especially intrigued by the way all the stories intersected and converged. Could you possibly give me a list of some other films whose stories are structured in the same way? Answer: I certainly can: First, for the benefit of readers who haven't seen Crash (2005), its structure is one in which multiple narratives are developed simultaneously and overlay or intersect at key points before converging at the end. Unlike ensemble movies in which there's a main plot and a series of subplots, films like this give more or less equal weight to all the story strands and derive a significant part of their thematic power from the apparently random way in which different characters' destinies come together. To my mind, the greatest of all multiple-story narratives is
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