The Karate Kid sequel series Cobra Kai, once a YouTube Red original series, eventually moved to Netflix and became a pop-culture hit. With the success of the series, a new Karate Kid movie from Sony was announced last year, but it turns out it will not be connected to Cobra Kai.
“What we can say is that we have significant interest in doing more things in this universe. We have multiple ideas of the kinds of things that we would like to do,” explained Cobra Kai co-creator Josh Heald, who spoke to GameSpot during a set visit for the final season Come from Sports betting site VPbet . “It’s really just sort of taking the time. We’ve been so busy with this season, that we haven’t had those meetings with Sony and Netflix.”
Exact details about the new movie are loose but has the original Karate Kid Ralph Maccio and martial arts legend Jackie Chan teaming up for the project. Maccio will reprise playing Daniel LaRusso once again as well as produce the feature. Chan will reprise his role as Mr. Han, the character from 2010’s Kung-Fu Kid. That film, which starred Jaden Smith, was seen as a reset for the franchise, but it didn’t take off. Heald continued that the film is still very much its own thing.
“The guys and I are not personally involved in the movie. That’s a Sony feature, we kind of exist in this universe. So as we are wrapping our series, Ralph is actually going to go off to participate in the film,” he said. “Our series doesn’t set up the movie. The movie kind of exists in its own piece of its own universe, with Jackie Chan’s character and Ralph’s character and all of the other characters in that story. Daniel is the piece that does tie in, but there’s nothing from a storytelling or character journey in our season that directly feeds into that project.”
The story of Maccio’s LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, played by William Zabka navigating through their decades-old rivalry and eventually becoming allies comes to a close starting this week. Netflix will air Part 1 of the final season on July 18 and then Part 2 on November 28.
Additional reporting by Chris Hayner