We finally have our first official look at Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio in next year’s Karate Kid sequel, Karate Kid: Legends . The pair of martial arts icons join forces at last as they take a new student, Ben Wang’s Li Fong, under their respective wings, with EW revealing not only the first images from the movie but also our first hints at what to expect from the plot. You can check out the newly released first look image below.
I Am Not Okay With This and The End of the F…ing World director Jonathan Entwistle has now revealed how Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han and Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso come together in the sequel, thus confirming that the original 1984 The Karate Kid and the 2010 reimagining now exist in the same continuity.
“Without giving too much away, I can say that Mr. Han and Mr. Miyagi are the connection to Daniel. The Han family and the Miyagi family are connected all the way back to the old times. And there is a mention of this within the Karate Kid movie canon for those people who want to go looking for it.”
Jackie Chan Was Like Dumbledore on the ‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Set
The inclusion of action movie icon Jackie Chan is sure to cause a lot of excitement among fans, with Jonathan Erstwhile revealing that the Rush Hour and Police Story star was like “the magical Dumbledore” on set of Karate Kid: Legends.
“Apart from being a wonderful human being who is very warm, he is the type of actor that does not leave. When his day is done, you would often find him sitting next to me, sitting next to the DP, telling stories, talking to the actors. Jackie Chan is a movie star, and that is something that you don’t see so much anymore. He had the ability to come up with a tiny idea that I’d never thought of — and all of Jackie’s tiny ideas are in the movie. He was like the magical Dumbledore to us on set, and he’s like that in the movie too.”
The Karate Kid movie also raises a lot of questions regarding its relationship to Cobra Kai. While we await the final episodes on Netflix (due to be released on February 13, 2025), Erstwhile has now revealed that he was indeed in contact with Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg and Karate Kid: Legends will be “another piece” in the Cobra Kai universe.
“I have been a huge fan of Cobra Kai right from the beginning, and that’s one of the reasons that I thought this was such an exciting project. I was excited about the idea that the films and the series can all be part of one family. I’ve had some really detailed conversations with the Cobra Kai team about just cool stuff that we can do in the movie and can make this whole thing feel holistic. And obviously, Ralph is really, really close to it after all those years on Cobra Kai, and they’ve been involved in little steps along the way. Everything we talked about made it into the movie in some way or other, either through Ralph or through the conversations. We’re really excited that we’ve added another piece to the overall universe.”
