Exciting news today for anyone who thinks, correctly, that modern crime-thrillers don't feature enough wise-cracking talking cars anymore. Deadline reports that James Wan, along with his Atomic Monster partner Michael Clear and Spyglass Media Group, is developing a film based on the Knight Rider franchise. TJ Fixman, a video game scribe who worked on Ratchet and Clank and Resistance: Fall of Man, is handling the script.

The core of the Knight Rider brand is the NBC series that ran from 1982 to 1986, launching David Hasselhoff to stardom in the lead role of Michael Knight. A crimefighter by trade and wearing-a-leather-jacket-with-no-shirt-underneath innovator by hobby, Knight partnered with a high-tech A.I. car named KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand), voiced by William Daniels. The series launched a short-lived spinoff, Code of Vengeance, the sequel series Team Knight Rider, and a TV reboot in 2008.

There's not a ton of plot details quite yet on Fixman's feature film remake, but the report does note it will maintain "the anti-establishment tone of the original." Fixman has been building a nice little reputation for himself recently, attaching producer Greg Berlanti and star Michael B. Jordan to his Men Who Kill at Fox as well as selling his scripts One Night on the Hudson to Universal and Brotherhood of Magic to MGM.

As for Wan, the Conjuring creator's next directorial effort Malignant was removed from its original 2020 release date, which is a bummer, but he did recently announce he's gearing up for a time travel film with John Wick writer Derek Kolstad.