A new Karate Kid movie starring Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan is in the works

A brand new Karate Kid movie is in the works after the success of the YouTube original series, Cobra Kai. The new film will presumably merge separate strands of the Karate Kid series considering both Macchio and Chan will be present in it.

There was also a global casting call to find a teenage star for the film. It suggests the film will also feature a new character called Li Fong, who is described as “Chinese or mixed-race Chinese [aged] between 15-17 years old [and] speaks fluent English”. The website added: “Conversational Mandarin is a strong plus. He’s smart, scrappy and a skilled martial artist.”

Macchio starred in the first three Karate Kid movies between 1984 and 1989 and returned to anchor Cobra Kai which first aired in 2018. Chan, however, appeared in the 2010 reboot starring Jaden Smith. The pair appeared together in a short video to announce the global casting search.

The new film is set to be directed by Jonathan Entwistle (creator of  The End of the F***ing World) and is due to be released in December 2024.