Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight is the Daytime Emmy Award-winning American adaptation of the Japanese tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Ryuki, the twelfth installment of the Kamen Rider Series. It was brought to television by Steve and Michael Wang and produced by Jimmy Sprague through Adness Entertainment. The series had a sneak premiere on December 13, 2008, but started official broadcasting on January 3, 2009 and played throughout the year. Adness chose to adapt Ryuki over the other Heisei Rider shows as it has a large number of characters (Ryuki had 13 Riders in total) as well as a female Rider. It is also the first tokusatsu adaptation of a Kamen Rider Series since Saban's Masked Rider, which was adapted from Kamen Rider Black RX. The show first aired in the United States on The CW Television Network during its CW4Kids programming block. Statements by director Steve Wang and lead Stephen Lunsford show that The CW had dropped Dragon Knight at the end of the year before its final two episodes aired in the US. The final episodes were uploaded to the 4Kids TV website on December 18, 2009. In 2012, all of the episodes were removed from the 4Kids TV website.
In the early licensing information for the series, Adness Entertainment had intended to also film a feature-length movie for Dragon Knight. In an interview, Steve Wang stated that they had written a story for a film, but Adness was raising money to bring over another Kamen Rider for broadcast in the US rather than a film or a second season of Dragon Knight.
To date, the company has not released any announcements regarding any other Rider shows or any intention to begin production of the script written for the Dragon Knight film. This leaves Dragon Knight's fate uncertain. Though Adness still presumably retains the rights to the series proper within the United States, it may not have the rights to the footage or suits due to not having made use of either for the last two years. There appear to be no current plans to release Dragon Knight on domestic DVD within the United States itself, though it has seen international release, as detailed elsewhere in this article. This includes a release in Japan by Toei, the company which holds the rights to Kamen Rider in Japan.
In 2010, Dragon Knight was nominated for and won the Daytime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Stunt Coordination", a new category for the Daytime Emmys.
Read more about Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight: Plot, International Broadcasts, Video Games
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