ANDRON: We didn't get too much in the way of mandates. Keeping the mythology alive was kind of more my thing. And it's not only paying homage to the original but just feeling that there was a way 25 years later to continue the series that again would be a lot of fun. And paying tribute to the fanbase as well which is very much still alive and active...as evidenced by KnightRiderOnline (laughs). We couldn't remake it. It was kind of the one thing we knew we didn't want to do. But no, there wasn't much in way of a mandate. We kind of found our way in with creating this character who didn't exist in the original. And who would have been the person who invented the first KITT, and then was moved away. And that really helped us find a way to get back into it and find a story. But we were kind of let go. To be honest, the first version of this that I sent to our producer to send to the studio stayed pretty close. The original story that I wanted to do is kind of what we ended up doing, which is pretty cool.

ANDRON: This is going to sounds like a cheap answer but kind of all of them. I loved our characters. I created our hero character who is somebody who is a little more jaded, a little more bitter with the state of things. Our inventor? Even our bad guys, I think they each have a really nice personality to them. And they're able to play in this world. And I'm really happy with the actors that we cast and the way the characters were presented. I really couldn't say that I liked one of them more than the other.

ANDRON: I'm one of those writers... I've never written with an actor in mind. And certainly for something like this where we really didn't even want big names. I think it just has to come from a character standpoint, and if you create dynamic characters with individual voices, an actor will come in and really make it their own and kind of make something great out of it. Having no idea who we could get with this, I didn't write with anyone specifically in mind, until we learned that Hasselhoff was going to be a part of it. We anticipated that he may, but we didn't know if he would do it or not. But in anticipation of that, we wrote some of that stuff with him in mind.

ANDRON: You don't. We certainly wanted to give him the opportunity, and we didn't know if he'd be interested in doing it or what his schedule would be like. There are so many things that are beyond our control. In the original story that was pitched, I hoped to have him on board. Again, because between him and William Daniels they really were that original series. And I knew we were going to have to go in a different direction with the voice. So it was nice to be able to have David there, and to have him come and take part in this was really special. It was a lot of fun.

ANDRON: Partly that's just maybe one of my inclinations. I think what keeps people really coming back and what really interests me about any writing really is character. And I feel this should be the opportunity to have a few great young actors around. It just opens things up. It gives you more options for storylines. It's still very much going to be The KITT-Mike show. But to have those other elements going on around him. In the original series you had Mike and his mission every week. And of course you had Devon and you had Bonnie, you had those people around, but you also weren't seeing those people behind the scenes a whole lot. You weren't necessarily developing those characters. And I have trouble personally envisioning a show where you don't have the storylines kind of running through. Not to say that it will be serialized the way Lost is serialized, but perhaps long-running stories throughout. The character arcs are what I think are really valuable and really interesting. And I wanted to have a few characters around, you can watch how their lives are impacted by this car and by Mike and by the lives they choose to lead.

ANDRON: Yeah, I think that model... not to say that model is outdated, but to have a more ongoing arc. We have our initial little bad guys in this which I think we're going to keep alive throughout the series. It just gives you more directions to go. People expect more. There's been so much free TV, especially in the last 5 or 6 years, and the movies of course. And I just think we want to be able to keep as much alive in as we can.

ANDRON: I didn't have a tremendous amount of time, most of the time was spent focused on the characters. But I think the visual representation, just to make sure that technology was something that did exist and was viable. But beyond that, we didn't spend a whole lot of time explaining it because people tune out pretty quickly when you start talking about formulas and the structure (laughs). I think the visual representations we've got to show the examples of that are going to be so cool looking. We've got Stargate doing all our visual effects, we just started in the last few days actually to see what they're going to be able to do. It just looks incredible.

ANDRON: Yeah, the old one was simply impervious, and while that's cool it just felt like there was a need again to update it, to bring something new to the table. This is something you've never really seen before, I don't think. If it's out there now I certainly haven't seen it.

ANDRON: Right. You've seen the car where the bullets just bounce off, and it's not necessarily going to be that. We wanted KITT to be able to disguise himself too and do some of those things. So the nanotechnology allowed us to do that.

ANDRON: That's exactly right. I guess those things are out of the bag but it's not giving too much away. It's funny, we went in and pitched to Ben Silverman and we started talking about Transformers, and what I really liked about Transformers was the relationship between Shia and the car. It was so great and so well done. And we started talking about Knight Rider and when Bumblebee gets taken, you give a shit. You're like oh man, Bumblebee? (laughs) the fact that that dynamic can be brought back, that's what I was really inspired by. We started talking about that, and when it got relayed to the press it just turned into a Transformers thing. Which was really not necessarily what we intended. It's not like it's going to turn into a plane and fly away, I'll say that right now (laughs).

ANDRON:(laughs) Well, we had a lot of fun, I will say that. I don't want to get people in trouble (laughs). We absolutely had a blast making it and I think that's something that's certainly reflected in the show, I think you'll see it. It's a riot. We literally in just the last week or two have finally got the cut together and got it to the studio and the network. I know people are really, really excited. It just cooks along as it is and it's an absolute riot to watch it. And I think that attitude that the cast and crew brought to it, you can tell when you're watching it.

ANDRON: It was. Part of it is that everybody here was pretty young, and this was our first big shot at something. So there's no ego, no bullshit, everybody shows up to play, to create the best thing they can. Everybody was really excited. I have a lot of respect for those guys and the way they came to really work. And the attitude they brought to the set. You hear horror stories from TV from writers' rooms and the set, that it's just everything... people are a nightmare, you get creative differences going on it gets difficult, because people have a tendency to take it personally.

It's not like you're in a business meeting and you're arguing over numbers. When it's your idea, and people reject that, people get upset, they take it pretty hard. But this was in the best sense of things. And granted it took Raines, to help give me my first shot. That's an attitude that he certainly brought to it. And to the writers of Raines, and all those writers. I spent time on that show and I saw what a great collaborative and creative experience it can be in it's best form. We wanted to be that, all the way around, and everyone else just took cues from that. And I think if and when this goes to series, hopefully that will continue. And when Justin and Deanna and Sydney and all these guys are super famous they won't become nasty (laughs). Myself included.

ANDRON: We still had a fight sequence to do when he got hurt. But by the time we came back... if there had to be an injury, this was kind of the best case scenario for a couple reasons. One, we were almost done shooting. It was before Christmas so we were able to do a few days and kind of just shoot out the rest of the stuff we had without him. So we got a break. We had a week after Christmas and then New Years for him to recover. By the time we came back to pick up the last 3 days, he was in really good shape and moving around really well. We had to double him out of course, but it's still him doing all the stuff. It's not like he needed surgery and we were in serious trouble and it's a CG Justin (laughs). People don't really understand... you go and shoot a movie, and you get in the editing room and they spend 90 million on this thing and you realize there are things you don't have. It's inevitable. There's just things you wish you'd done differently you don't have, and movies oftentimes they'll go back to reshoot stuff. In TV, you don't get to do that. We would not have gotten to do that if it weren't for Justin's injury. We got to see 74 out of the 82 minutes cut together. And we knew we were going to have 3 or 4 more days to shoot a week later. It was like, great. Now we can get this shot, we can do this, we can do this differently, get that shot. In a strange way, poor Justin but it helped a tremendous amount. It almost didn't hurt us at all.

ANDRON: Yeah. Because we got to wait 3 weeks to come back and shoot 3 or 4 days.

ANDRON: Yeah, it was helpful.

ANDRON: Yes.

ANDRON: Nothing will happen until the strike ends. There's no reason to go forward. But hopefully it does well and the strike ends, and we'll hire 5 or 6 other writers. I'm sure somebody else will come in and help me show-run in the way they did Lost *** 27:55 Because I haven't run a room before. I feel certainly capable enough in the story sense, there's just things and the politicing, and I would just want someone else to help guide the direction. But I certainly would be very much involved and would Dave Bartis and hopefully Doug and Steve Schill, and we keep the same quality from the pilot. Hopefully it will just get better and better. There are a lot of great writers in this town. And while I'm good, certainly there are people who are better. And getting a room of those people together, it will elevate everything. I'm really excited about the prospect.

ANDRON: Yeah, certainly being able to play off their strengths. And just seeing the way they take certain things and just being in that environment... again, you sit on set for 6 weeks and you start thinking, oh this would be great to do with KITT, we could do this with Justin, and just starting to think about those things and brainstorm. I've already got pages written down of really fun, cool stuff we're going to be able to implement if and when it goes.

ANDRON: I think we'll have to conceive if there are ways to do it organically through the series. In the pilot, a decent amount of it does come back. It's not the mythology was driving it, but it is a big part of it. And the problem with doing those is finding something that makes it relevant 25 years later. I know there is KARR and Garth Knight and there are all these things from the past. While some of those doors are closed, some remain open and those can be investigated. But again, those things, you start bringing them back and you have to start explaining. It's going to be a new audience. Most people won't be well-versed in the mythology. If we can do it in a way that's in the here and now and really cooks along, we'll do it. But you start having to go back and explain all these things, then most people just start to tune out. So while we want to acknowledge it and live in the world of Knight Rider, I think the stories should be very forward moving.

ANDRON: My pleasure, thanks for your time. I do hope you guys like it. While this is going to reach a mass audience and you want everyone to be into it, there is certainly an appreciation for the fans who still really do believe in the show and the basic idea. So I hope you guys like it and respond.

ANDRON: My pleasure, man. Thank you for the request. I appreciate it.

ANDRON: Yeah, I'm aware of the site. I just recently started looking through it when I found out this interview was going to go down... It really is cool to see how excited most people are and open-minded. It's encouraging.

ANDRON: And I understand that completely. I was young when the original was on. I was born in '79 so I was 4 years old up to 8 years old. And I loved it. I had a little KITT car, was the hugest fan and we lived in Los Angeles so I could to Universal and sit in the car there. I loved the original. All those other incarnations of it... 2000, Team Knight Rider, were so bad. It kind of seemed like a travesty compared to the original. We really wanted this to be something that was special. It's like the Batman movies. They made a good one or two, and then they made all these horrible ones. But then you get Chris Nolan (screenwriter) involved and you make Batman Begins, The Dark Knight. You kind of find that new tone for it and you make it work. When this came up and we were approached about doing it we kind of watched the original. And as much as people love the original and basically want to see the original again, you watch it now and there really is a need to update it. As much as I loved it as a kid it's just a different audience, it's a different world out there. The technology is different. And I understand people's skepticism, but at the same time... looking at the new car, we couldn't do a Trans Am. We just couldn't do it. And there weren't any options. It had to be an American car. And in the world we live, there's going to me marketing ties. That's just how you're going to get those things done and on the air. You want to sell out as little as possible in that regard, but there's only so much you can do for the money. This thing is going to be so much cooler and look so much better because we're able to use the Ford product. We're able to get a little money from Ford, but beyond that more the advertising. Lots of people don't realize we were scrambling to get money together for this anyway. So having that, it gets you a better cast, it gets you better effects, and the car is still cool. I just don't know what else we would have gone with. There's no way you can go with a concept car. And we discussed other cars. But with the Mustang, and how excited Ford was, and how cool we knew we could make a Mustang we thought it was the best option for moving forward.

ANDRON: Yeah I hope so. I was never a fan of the version of the Mustang in the late 80s, but the KR and that new version is a pretty cool-looking car.

ANDRON: Yeah... And there were cars like Dodge who was really interested but we ended up not going with them. We didn't want to do a Charger. We didn't want to do a 4-door. There were some things we tried to stay true to with the idea of a sports car. It's a little more muscly, but he inside and the intelligence of it... The computer aspect of it, I feel will still give it that intelligence even though maybe it doesn't look as streamlined as the original KITT.

ANDRON: I did see that in articles that cropped up when I first got the job. They were like this kid has no credits, what the hell? But everybody has to start somewhere. I moved out to L.A. 4 years ago and I had written fiction in college... I'll give you the abbreviated version... When I moved down to L.A. I started writing spec screenplays. I wrote a feature and then wrote a couple of episodes of TV and a pilot. And people would send them out and people really responded very favorably. But this was only two-and-a-half years ago. And it took me that first year, year-and-a-half to really get these writing samples out. And things snowballed immediately. I got signed with a great manager I met at CAA which is a huge agency, and got this job on Raines. NBC really wanted to shoot the original pilot I had written. But I had kind of written it for cable and really didn't want to change certain things so I politely declined and they offered me what is called a blind script deal while I was on Raines. Which is basically, write a pilot for us. We don't know what the pilot will be, but we'll make the agreement now. And when the time comes, we'll sit down and talk about what to do, whether it's something that I bring to them or it's something they want to do. And that was all last year. And I wrote a pilot that they didn't end up shooting but they liked the pilot enough to get me another one of these script deals. So this year, when the network came to them and said listen, we really want to do Knight Rider, the studio stepped up on my behalf and said we've got this kid who's great, read his stuff. let us know if you think he can handle it. And the network read the pilots I had written and got behind me. And then we got involved with Dave Bartis and Dutch Oven. And accordingly Doug Liman who I talked about doing another pilot with, which NBC would not let us do, because it was an Iraq hospital show and they wanted no part of that. So we went from Iraq hospital show to Knight Rider.

ANDRON: Quite a jump is right. To be honest, from my point of view, at this young stage in my career, it's really important to have that first thing get made and do well. And again, Knight Rider was something I was really passionate about and I feel like it needed a younger voice. Somebody who really appreciated the original, and was going to try to stay true to the mythology but just knew how to make it cool. Give it something that the new generation really appreciates and give it a fresh voice. They obviously thought I'd be able to do it, and I think so far we've matched expectations if not exceed them.

ANDRON: I'll tell you, I had no time which was another factor in this. I've got a reputation for being pretty quick. This is 2 hours, so you're talking about a feature. The difference between an hour pilot and a 2-hour I think is more than people can imagine. It's obviously double the running time, but just as far as having to create arcs and then close off the arcs, with an hour pilot you just create all these problems and leave them open. So to bring a story full-circle is a much bigger challenge. They came to me in mid-August with the would-you-like-to-do-this thing, and I had a full shootable script locked on November 3rd at midnight, right before the script happened. You're talking about two-and-a-half months to come up with the idea, do the outline, go through all the notes. I wrote the first 110-page draft in eleven days. And we whittled it down and whittled it down, and I thing it wound up being something like 79 pages. Even then, I had a 90-page script that everybody loved, then we got our budget (laughs). And everybody said take 10 pages out. Change that scene and change that scene. It's such a hectic process anyway. But there's more going into that than most people would ever know. But Dave Bartis and Gene Klein, the other executive, were amazing along with Doug Liman... we got them a script in 2 months that they were really excited about shooting. And then I just sat on set and watched (laughs). We couldn't rewrite anything. What we shot is very, very close to the original script.

ANDRON: Yeah, because nothing is ever really done. You know when you've shot something, you got it in the editing room, you're always thinking, boy I wish I could go back and do this. And with something that had to happen that quickly anyway, it's like I could have rewritten every night before the next scene. I couldn't rewrite for our actors when we started casting them. Everything was done. The problem with the time crunch was really frustrating. Dave Bartis and Steve Schill, our directors could work with the actors and they could kind of change little things that weren't working, but it's hard to sit by. Not that something isn't working necessarily, but something that you know could be better.

ANDRON: For us it really started when we sat down... the first element is the relationship between this guy and this car. It was a great element, kind of an odd-couple element to Michael and KITT. KITT being the sound logic and reason, Michael maybe being a little more emotional and that was certainly a dynamic we wanted to keep very much alive. The main theme of One Man Can Make A Difference... you can argue it now and it can seem a little cheesey but that was a huge part of the original, and that's something also that we kept going back to. We were struggling to kind of find through-lines. This needs to be about...you know, the world right now is kind of an ugly place. You got a war going on, you got a lot of people who maybe aren't happy with the direction of politics in this country, there's just so much chaos. But the theme is actually strangely and maybe possibly always will be, but it's still really relevant. The idea that one person is out there without a political ideology, just trying to go out there and help people and do something for the better. I think that's something that we really tried to keep alive as well. And then just the cool guy and the cool car, which is as old as entertainment since cars have been around.