‘Cobra Kai’ star Ralph Macchio ‘feels like Luke Skywalker’ with the expanding ‘Karate Kid’ universe
The story of Daniel LaRusso will continue after the end of Netflix’s ‘Cobra Kai’ with an upcoming new ‘Karate Kid’ film
Part two of “Cobra Kai” season 6 will continue the decades-long storyline of student-turned-sensei Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), who will be leading his Miyagi-Do pupils alongside Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) to hopeful victory in the infamously intense Sekai Taikai karate tournament.
But though the sixth season will be the final one for the hit Netflix series — the final edition is being released in three parts, with the first five having arrived this past July, the second batch dropping on November 28 and the final five eps to follow in 2025 — it won’t be the end of Daniel’s onscreen journey, with an upcoming “The Karate Kid” film also set to premiere next year.
Ralph Macchio recently sat down with Lee Cowan for a CBS News interview, in which the actor discussed how it feels to be reprising his most famous role on the big screen forty years after the martial arts classic “The Karate Kid” debuted in 1984.
“Unique, really unique. I don’t know how many other experiences there are like that, of an entity, of a piece of pp culture that comes back 40 years later at this level,” Macchio shared.
“For me, it’s never gone away, that’s the difference. For me, it never disappeared, and it never disappeared from pop culture, whether it’s an SNL sketch, whether it’s ‘How I Met Your Mother’ or, you know, ‘The Simpsons,’ it’s always lived in pop culture.”
The karate dramedy “Cobra Kai” famously spun off of “The Karate Kid” legacy when it premiered first as a YouTube Red series in 2018 and then was acquired by Netflix for seasons 3 through 6.
“It just keeps going,” Macchio says of the ever-expanding “The Karate Kid” universe, which could continue with even more spin-offs. “We’ll see what happens with other chapters with ‘Cobra Kai’ to spin that off, we have so many great young characters to explore.”
According to Macchio, there’s also a “The Karate Kid” Broadway musical in the works: “Robert Cayman is who wrote the original screenplay has written the book for the musical, it’s in workshop phase now.”
And the upcoming 2025 film, which will pair up Macchio with Jackie Chan, will continue the LaRusso legacy. “It’s really quite extraordinary. I’m feeling a little Luke Skywalker in the ‘Star Wars’ vein — he could be on ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘Rogue One.’ And so, it’s not something I take lightly and certainly not something I’m taking for granted. It’s really, you know, a great privilege and I’m grateful to have it,” the actor added.
