Cinematical

One KITT driver has been named in this dueling Knight Rider kerfuffle. If you remember from last month, as series creator Glen A. Larsen has been slowly forming a feature film based on the series, NBC decided to zip in and create a 2-hour movie/back-door pilot to steal the spotlight. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it's one step closer to being the first one out there -- taking a cue, it seems, from David Hasselhoff's previous hunt for Michael Knight's son. NBC has picked soap star Justin Bruening to star as Knight's offspring.

Just like The Hoff years before, who joined the classic show after a stint on The Young and the Restless, Bruening will make the jump into KITT from soap operas -- for the last four years, he's played Jamie Martin on All My Children. Personally, I'm more interested to see if he follows Hasselhoff's path and dips into bikini babe television and international singing superstardom after the role, rather than what he does with this questionable project. With a star in place, the network, so far, is beating Larsen's movie project to the punch. So, onto the questions. Can this actor pull it off and draw KITT fans in? Will this steal the thunder and end/hurt the film? Do you care? When did Knight Rider become such tasty subject matter that people would battle each other for it?