Just when you thought The Karate Kid universe couldn’t get any bigger, it just did. The star of the original franchise as well as Cobra Kai, Ralph Macchio, is teaming up with action movie legend, and star of the 2010 Karate Kid remake, Jackie Chan, for a brand new Karate Kid movie.
News of the new movie broke last year but at the time, it was unclear what it was about exactly. All Sony was saying is that it took place in the same universe as Cobra Kai and the original films. Now, we know, it’ll take place in that universe, and bring the universe of the 2010 film, which co-starred Jaden Smith, into the story too.
Macchio and Chan announced the news in the below video, which also revealed there’s an open casting call for the person who’ll play the title character. Check it out.
This new Karate Kid will come to theaters on December 13, 2024, directed by Jonathan Entwistle (The End of the F**king World) and written by Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit). There are no details on what exactly the plot is but you can begin to put together the pieces if Chan’s Mr. Han, a new type of Mr. Miyagi, meets Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso, himself a karate sensei.
The timing of the film will almost certainly come after the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai too, which is currently in development. Though that’s just an assumption.
To be honest here, as a long-time Karate Kid fan, I don’t love this news. The 2010 film feels so different from everything the team behind Cobra Kai has done to inject more popularity into the franchise. Are those guys even involved? They know and understand Karate Kid better than anyone. (We’ve reached out Sony and will update this post if we hear back.) And sure, you can never go wrong with Jackie Chan, but we’ll have to learn a lot more to see what makes this theater-worthy. What do you think?
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