The trades apparently read yesterday's tirade about their not being any news -- because as weird luck would have it, everything hit the wire as I was getting my Anderson Cooper fix. (I'm not making that up for the sake of cuteness, it's true. The evening is not complete until I discover I lost the 360 Challenge ... again) Now, to the headlines:

• Being the sole man alive never meant you couldn't get a franchise! Variety reports that Warner Bros is putting a prequel to I Am Legend into production. The prequel boasts the return of Will Smith and director Francis Lawrence, and is based on a script outline cooked up by Smith, Lawrence, and producers Akiva Goldsman and James Lassiter. Obviously, it takes place before the plague wiped out New York. I hope they go daring and all Terminator 3-ish, and show Smith as being the scientist responsible for the whole mess. I also hope they name it I Will Be Legend.
  

• Top Cow continues its slow takeover of comic book movies -- IESB reports that Fathom movie is back on, despite creator Michael Turner's untimely death. And reportedly, Cinematical's ever present friend Megan Fox has snagged the lead as Aspen Matthews. It's all from anonymous sources, but given that Magdalena and Witchblade are on their way, I wouldn't be surprised if it's made official before too long.

• Who needs Iron Man and Samuel L. Jackson cameos? September 30th brings, at long last, your chance to finally own David Hasselhoff's Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D on DVD. Don't think you can pick this up just anywhere, though, it's exclusive to Best Buy. But what price to pay for a cult classic?

We're getting more Beverly Hills Ninja. It might be September, but it feels like it's Christmas! Variety reports that the film will be the first mainstream Hollywood flick to shoot in South Korea, but it's still keeping to its roots with the simple name -- Beverly Hills Ninja 2. Written by Mitch Klebanoff (co-producer and writer of the original), who will also direct, the terrible idea will focus on "an orphaned boy who wants to be a ninja but becomes involved in a crime in Hollywood while looking for his real parents." One would think Kevin Farley might be the guy heading this sucker, but no it's DAVID HASSELHOFF. Oh yes, try to resist the Hoff going ninja.

Farley, instead, gets a little something different. What do you do after you run with the cliche of "unattractive" girls who can miraculously become hot with the help of a shunned Playboy bunny? Divorced dudes. Variety reports the director of House Bunny, Fred Wolf, is directing a new flick called Divorced Guys. The comedy, which follows a group of divorced guys who go on a road trip to figure out how their marriages failed, was written by Wolf, Farley, and David Spade, who will also star.

Meanwhile, it looks like Michael Douglas is gearing up for another wacky role that could be worth the time. Variety reports that he's going to "play a car magnate with a runaway libido" in a new film called Solitary Man. More specifically, he's a guy who used to be the owner of a chain of car dealerships until "business and romantic indiscretions" mucked things up. Making the whole thing more intriguing -- Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, and Jenna Fischer are in talks to co-star. It's not quite as cool as him playing Liberace, but it'll do.

There's no more Trans Am goodness for Michael Knight or rather, the next generation -- Mike Tracer. (Every time I hear his name, I think of the Chasing Amy tracer rant.) The first KITT was a Pontiac Trans Am T-top, but this time around, the Knight Rider back-door pilot/television special is getting some Ford power. Jalopnik scored pictures of the new generation KITT, and it's a 550 HP Ford Shelby GT500KR Mustang, which you can see above.

Never being a Trans Am fan, I'm pretty happy with the auto choice. It's modernized, but it still has the lights and KITT feel to it. (The site mentions that the lights were photoshopped in for the picture, because they weren't working when it was taken; but otherwise, that's the car in all its real glory.) Before, I just liked the idea of a car you could chat with -- it makes long trips alone all the more fun. (I wonder if KITT would sing along to the radio?) But now, I would love to take that out for a test-drive. How about you?

[via Coming Soon]

If anything could really hurt the feature film for Knight Rider, the one that series creator Glen A. Larson has been working on for a while, I would guess that it would be the Hoff. As you might remember, NBC wanted to get in on the KITT action, so they started to make a 2-hour movie/back-door pilot to come out before the movie and steal its thunder. Justin Bruening joined the cast earlier this month, and now the NBC project might have scored the big cheese -- David Hasselhoff. Reuters has reported that he's in talks to reprise his role as Michael Knight for the project.

If he signs on the dotted line, he'll join Bruening and another soap opera alum, Deanna Russo -- who will follow in Hoff's footsteps, by getting into the Rider via The Young & the Restless. And here's the story: Mike Tracer (Bruening) is Michael Knight's son, but he never knew his dad. "Burned by his love for childhood best friend and one-time girlfriend Sarah Karmen (Russo), Mike is wasting away in Las Vegas when Sarah reappears and is willing to pay off Mike's gambling debt in exchange for help." You see, Sarah's dad is KITT inventer Charles Kamen, and she works in the engineering department of Stanford. KITT tells her that her father is missing, so she recruits the kid. How Hoff fits in, oh, I imagine he'll give his son some tips or something. Oh yeah -- and Sydney Poitier, of Grindhouse fame, is also involved.

Could Hasselhoff be involved in both projects? Or, if he signs onto one, will that mean the end of the other? What are your thoughts?

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?

Yes, there will soon be an Anaconda 3 and an Anaconda 4. But that's not the most amusing news. According to Moviehole, the back-to-back cheapie sequels will star none other than (ready?) David Hasselhoff! Yep, the Hoff will be starring as the hero in a pair of Anaconda sequels. (Logic dictates that Dave does NOT get eaten by a giant snake in the third film.) Co-starring in Anaconda 3: The Offspring will be Crystal Allen, Zoltan Butuc and (who else?) John Rhys-Davies. (Damn, John, did you burn through that Rings money already?)

Both of the flicks are being shot in Romania by Don E. FauntLeRoy, the cinematographer turned director who has no less than three Steven Seagal movies under his belt. (So I'm guessing a pair of Anaconda sequels would actually be considered a promotion for Don.) And it looks like the producers are sticking to the old "search through a snake-infested jungle in search of something valuable" schpiel once twice again. As if you hadn't guessed by now, both flicks will premiere on the Sci-Fi Channel before settling onto dusty video shelves for the next 15 years.

The original Anaconda (1997) starred Jon Voight, Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Danny Trejo and Kari Wuhrer. The 2004 sequel -- Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid -- starred Johnny Messner, Morris Chestnut, KaDee Strickland and Matthew Marsden. So if Anaconda 3 and 4 star David Hasselhoff and John Rhys-Davies, then I'm guessing Anaconda 5: Big Snake Babies will star someone like Andy Dick and Skeet Ulrich.

Having said all that, I'll rent anything with giant animals and screaming victims. Monster flicks are my true Kryptonite.

*cue Knight Rider theme song* Knight Industries Two Thousand is coming... or will it be Three Thousand? First, David Hasselhoff, aka Michael Knight, was looking at having a cinematic shot at the classic '80s show, and then came word that the series creator Glen A. Larson was working on the feature. Finally, The Hoff was trying to give the role of his son off to a certain passerby named Orlando Bloom. But now, there's more, and by more, I mean more news, and more Knight Rider. Oh yes, according to AICN, there will be not one, but two reappearances of KITT for Knight Rider fans.

Forget about thinking one sequel or remake is enough -- the time has come for the dueling features. How could two places have the same rights, you wonder? Well, one of these productions, Larson's, is heading for the big screen. Universal/NBC, however, is jealous, so they're going to make their own 2 hour movie/backdoor pilot. Basically, they own the television rights while Larson has the rights for the film. AICN's source says: "If this series is created by Universal, it is not being created to revive the series, nor is it to draw in new viewers for the fans. This series is Universal's attempt to couple together a sub-par rushed project and attach a big name to it with intentions to try and sideline the movie Glen has been working endlessly on getting to the big screen." I'm all for a well-down return of KITT, but is anyone else thinking that this NBC rush-job is a big, embarrassing waste of time? No wonder networks are struggling if this is the best they can come up with -- trying to beat the series creator to the punch.

Granted, it's only tangentially movie-related, but this little number is just too fantastic to pass up. The people at mysterious (Perhaps only to me, of course -- I just don't get exactly what the hell it is. Yes, I'm tech-disabled.) HD-provider Voom are very excited about the fact that, this month, they're offered the HD world premieres of a whole mess of James Bond films. To celebrate the occasion, they went out and got the biggest star on God's green earth to both host the series and sing a theme song in a video that looks a whole lot like the credits sequence to a Bond flick. And when you're dealing with something this epic, there's only one man to whom you can turn: That's right, David Hasselhoff is bringing the Bond. Sort of.

Since the Bond theme doesn't actually have any words, Voom and The Hoff instead chose Secret Agent Man (a song that many of us spent a long time thinking was called "Secret Asian Man") as the song that would bring out the man's inner Bond. So, in what I assume/pray is a tongue-in-cheek performance, we're treated to some pretty magnificent Hasselhoff action, most of it involving guns and a tux. I gotta say, though, I still don't get why the Germans are so into this guy.

[via MI6]

Ok, hands up if you're surprised by the news that The Weinstein Company is going to make a movie version of Knight Rider. Yeah, that's what I thought -- I see three hands. Despite the fact that, thus far, big-screen versions of TV classics (using the word loosely, in some cases) have for the most part not only been critically lambasted but also box office failures, Hollywood seems to have a wild hair about the concept, and are clearly determined to beat that horse until its good and dead (while I sit here and gleefully mix my metaphors). Weirdly, the IMDb already has a listing for the film, starring David Hasselhoff -- a project that must be either dead or made-up.

What's going to be even more fun that then inevitable "If The Hoff's not in it, I'm not going!" versus "OMG! Owen Wilson would be so great in this!" debates is the fact that TWC apparently see this thing as having "franchise potential." Come on -- what's better than a whole lot of movies about a talking car?

Would you like to hear something even more demented than the fact that there is going to be a Baywatch movie? Yes? Said movie is supposedly going to be directed and co-produced by Eli Roth. Yes, you heard me right: splatter/gore/horror wonderboy Eli Roth is going to direct a movie about boobs, sun, and "crime-fighting lifeguards." Honestly. This is so odd that I have already checked the calendar three times to confirm that it is not, in fact, April Fool's Day - and, since it's not, I suppose we'll have to accept that it's really happening.

According to Roth, the movie is going to feature "a new crop of hotties" (oh, joy), but will also include a cameo from legendary boob lifeguard Pamela Anderson. Thank goodness for that. As far as the plot is concerned, David Hasselhoff (who appears to be somehow involved - despite saying last spring that he wouldn't be) says it's going to totally rock. No, for real. "It will be set in different locations around the world. There will be lifeguards who are also sent on crime-busting sprees." Are you hearing this? "Crime-busting sprees"?! Globe-trotting lifeguards? What, are the world's cops all dead, or something?

Can you stand the anticipation?

Edit: Thanks to Carsten for pointing out the very reassuring update to the original AICN post: Roth is, in fact, producing, but is NOT directing the film. Thanks goodness. Of course, the movie's still happening, so not everything has been resolved - still, it's a step in the right direction.