Why MASKED RIDER RYUKI and how did the whole concept of KAMEN RIDER DRAGON KNIGHT come about?
Steve Wang: I was approached by Aki Komine, a producer I had worked with on the original GUYVER film and another film called DRIVE back in July of 2006. He told me he had gotten Toei Studio’s approval to do a demo film [pre-show pilot] of KAMEN RIDER. He and his partners had chose RYUKI because there were 13 Riders and that meant more toys to sell. At first I had some reservations about doing the show. Aki and I had talked about doing an original Kamen Rider film back in the early 90’s- pre Saban MASKED RIDER days- but we couldn’t get the rights. And doing an adaptation of an existing show was not something I was all that interested in. But after some back and forth, Toei agreed for us to re-imagine the show anyway we saw fit and that was what convinced me to do it. So my brother Mike and I came up with a general premise for the show based on some of the original RYUKI footage and we wrote the script with Scott Philips [screenwriter of DRIVE]. We made the pre-show pilot for very little
