On April 25, one of the most anticipated YouTube Red series of 2018 made its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The annual New York City event hosted the first-ever public screening of Cobra Kai, a sequel to the 1984 classic The Karate Kid.
Tribeca attendees were treated to the first two episodes of the show, which stars William Zabka and Ralph Macchio as adult versions of their Karate Kid characters. This time, however, Zabka’s Johnny is the scrappy underdog, while Macchio’s Daniel is the cocky overachiever. At the end of the first episode, Johnny relaunched the Cobra Kai dojo, which served as an antagonistic force in the first Karate Kid movie.
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In a panel that followed the screening, Zabka and Macchio — who serve as Cobra Kai‘s executive producers in addition to starring in it — explained how the show was made. As part of that explanation, Zabka told how he convinced Macchio to join the project with a package that included broccolini.
Also present on the panel were Cobra Kai co-creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald. The three creative partners revealed themselves to be long-time Karate Kid superfans who geeked out at the opportunity to look over the film’s original footage. They incorporated some additional, unused angles of famous shots (such as Daniel’s crane kick) into Cobra Kai.
As you might imagine from a group of superfans, Hurwitz, Schlossberg, and Heald are eager to make more seasons of Cobra Kai beyond the one that will premiere on YouTube Red on May 2, as are the franchise’s original stars. “We’re hoping to do this for a while,” Macchio admitted, and reiterated multiple times throughout the evening.
