The panel for Knight Rider was held this morning at Comic-Con. It seems there was some problems with some of the cast scheduled to appear (I’m not sure if Sydney was one) but this report goes on to say that due to traffic, some scheduled didn’t show up for about 20 Minutes. I’ve still not found many reports about the show as of yet (but there has been a lot of breaking news to sift through) so I expect there to be a little more tomorrow. I hope to find a few snaps of Syd too! Here is a bit of what went down, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.
It’s no surprise that Gary Scott Thompson, the guy behind The Fast and the Furious, is the showrunner for NBC’s upcoming reboot of Knight Rider. And it’s a good thing, too, because the man had nothing to do with the two-hour TV movie/backdoor pilot that aired on NBC in February — you know, the one that prompted little or no excitement from those who loved the original 1982 series starring David Hasselhoff.
I have wonderful news! Miss Sydney will be at my *biggest* dream destination, the annual San Diego Comic Con 2008 for another year in a row! Last year she helped bring the hype for Grindhouse and this year it will be all about her new series Knight Rider. I really hope we’ll get some pictures and news coverage from this tomorrow! I hope some fans will go out and support the show at the event.
Thursday July 24 - Hall H (11:45-12:45) Room 6A Knight Rider: First Look at the New Series and Q&A with Cast and Executive Producers
On the heels of NBC’s hit sequel movie based on the iconic 1980s television classic, Knight Rider has been reinvented as a supercharged action series showcasing the new KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand). Be the first to see exclusive footage from the new series. Moderated by Television Week deputy editor/columnist Josef Adalian, who participates in a Q&A session with executive producer/showrunner Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and The Furious, Las Vegas); executive producer David Bartis (Heist, The OC); and the cast: Justin Bruening (Cold Case), Deanna Russo (NCIS), Sydney Tamiia Poitier (Veronica Mars), Paul Campbell (Battlestar Galactica), Yancey Arias (Kingpin), Bruce Davison (X-Men) and Smith Cho (Blades of Glory).
Also a little while ago Sydney attended the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Los Angeles for the show. She also attended the NBC All-Star Party in LA as well. I am currently on the look out for pictures of these events.
And finally here is an interesting article talking about the fate of Sydney’s character Carrie Rivai’s sexuality. While at the press tour, reporters were interested to know if her character would still be lesbian, as was strongly implied in the two-hour television movie that aired in February. “We haven’t explored her sexuality at this point,” executive producer Gary Scott Thompson said at first. If she remains bisexual, Carrie Rivai will be one of only two lesbian/bisexual women of color on all of prime-time scripted television this fall. The other character is Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.
Currently they are shooting the third episode of the series, and Rivai’s personal life has not yet been addressed. “It isn’t an issue because it hasn’t been related to any of the story lines that we’re doing,” said executive producer Dave Bartis, who spoke to AfterEllen.com after the press conference. Bartis also worked on the TV movie.
Hello everyone! I’d like to appologize for there being no updates here on Sydney Online for over a month. If I didn’t mention it before, I had started a new job which led to one of the reasons I had little time for my online commitments. Well that was not all, right before I went on vacation at the end of June (shortly after my last update), my computer broke (yes, for the 12,893 time). So I planned to get everything sorted after we returned from our trip but it would have it be that it actually be another problem - with our internet / phone / cable wiring thus resulting in me having terrible connection problems for many months. So that delayed into a few weeks waiting on our company’s technician to have the first available appointment. Finally after all this hastle I thought everything was on solid ground once more, but My PC still seems to act up. (I truly think it’s Windows Vista now, so be wary all of you with this) so it’s a game of luck of being able to get online. However, I am able to use my friend’s computer once or twice a week for a few hours on my days off from work now and I hope I am going to be able to bring you steady updates once more.
This site has not been forgotten, and I hope from here on out I will be back to bring you steady updates about the fantastic Sydney Tamiia Poitier and her career. While I see Sydney has continued to remain out of the spotlight for the most part (aside from Knight Rider news) there is still plenty to look forward to here at the site and I hope you will stay with us.
The K.I.T.T. is back and you can watch him over and over again on DVD this September. Knight Rider will be released on DVD on September 9 according to MovieWeb. This TV movie, which became the pilot for the upcoming NBC series, will be priced at $14.98 SRP. Cover art is not available at this time, but we’ll update this story as soon as we get it.
Special Features:
- Commentary with Executive Producer David Bartis, and Stars Justin Bruening and Deanna Russo
- The Icon Reborn featurette
- K.I.T.T. - From 2000 to 3000 featurette
- Knight Rider - Legacy
- Preview trailers
Knight Rider fans have to be viewing the show’s return as a regular series on NBC this fall with some ambivalence. After all, while the two-hour TV film that acted as the new series’ pilot attracted a huge audience, there aren’t many people who watched it that actually like it. It’s now Gary Scott Thompson’s job to make the audience forget that and be comfortable coming back to watch Knight Rider every week.
“I’m frantically making those changes right now,” Thompson told Inside Line, when asked if there were going to be any significant differences between February’s TV movie and the series. “We’re determined to not have another Bionic Woman,” he said, referencing the series revival NBC undertook last year that collapsed in the ratings under the weight of its own pretensions. And he sees the series as something unique from the movie. “There’s the original series. There’s the two-hour movie. And now there’s the new series,” he explains.
Still, expect a lot of familiar faces to migrate from the movie to the series. Justin Bruening will return as KITT’s primary conversational partner, Deanna Russo and Sydney Tamiia Poitier will be back to provide feminine support and Bruce Davison will be on board to lend gravitas as the genius — sorry, super-genius — behind the KITT’s construction. And KITT’s voice will continue to be provided by Val Kilmer.
While things are incredibly quite with Sydney at the moment, I thought I’d catch up on some scans. I have now added a treasured handful of new Sydney material. Stuff on her is quite hard tome come by and luckily I’ve managed to find one of Sydney’s first solo covers on ebay (perhaps the first?) all the way back from 2003 when she was promoting the show Abbey, as well as some other nice things. I’d like to thank Riikka for contributing some clippings here as well. Proceed here to view everything. Remember if you have any scans that are not posted in the gallery, please send them in for us fans to see!
Knight Rider has been picked up by NBC for the 2008-2009 Fall season! You can check out a little about what is in store on Variety. They saw it will be a bit like The Fast and the Furious meets the show Las Vegas.
The show will air Wednesdays at 8:00 PM and have an encore on Saturdays at 9PM.
“We didn’t have a ton of time on the movie, which was done on a very tight schedule, so the biggest thing we want to do with the series is have more action and special effects, which requires time.” - Katherine Pope
I have replaced several shots of Sydney’s older People outtakes with new larger, untagged versions. It’s definitely one of my favorite shoots to date so it’s lovely having most without tags! I also added a new shoot pic of Sydney with her sister Anika and mother. Sydney looks very cute! Big thanks to Ally for these snaps!
