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Will Arnett will NOT be the voice of the new KITT after all

By fred | February 7, 2008

This makes me laugh so much. It really does.

So as you probably know there’s a new Knight Rider coming on NBC, as a made-for-TV movie first, but they hope it’ll do well so they can turn it into a series. There, already, I’m laughing. But that’s not the latest : Arrested Development’s Will Arnett had been casted to do the voice of the new KITT, and did a good job for what I could tell from the promos, even though I wished they had used to original voice, and the car doesn’t look that good to me, and the whole thing will suck I’m sure.

Anyways, Arnett’s voice is in all the promos as he had already completed the voice over for the whole movie. Only that won’t be used, instead NBC hired Val Kilmer to take over the part and redo everything. Two weeks before the thing airs.

And why ?

Well, that’s another funny one. Producers Doug Liman, Dave Bartis and Dave Andron - along with the network and studio - were all pleased with Arnett’s performance. But General Motors was not.

For years now Arnett has done voice-over in commercials for General Motors, but the new KITT doesn’t belong to them, it’s a Ford Mustang. So it’s the Ford logo you see everywhere on the promos, because more than a made-for-TV movie this new Knight Rider movie (as well as the series if it ever gets made) is first and foremost a huge promotion for Ford.

I guess it’s part of NBC new plan’s to make series now : No more pilots, and no more series based on great ideas, concepts, characters or anything, instead they gave a list of advertisers and people have to write a story revolving around their products.

Anyway, Ford is not General Motors. So when GM found out, they asked Arnett to pull out, “conflict of interest” they said. So he did : “I was very excited at the prospect of playing the part of KITT in the new Knight Rider movie. However, because of a long relationship with General Motors as the voice of GMC Trucks, I had to respectfully withdraw from the project.”

I don’t know about you, but this makes me laugh. And there’s nothing better than to laugh at NBC…

Posted in News
Shows: Knight Rider