Spoiler alert for “Karate Kid: Legends.”
Right here’s Johnny!
The latest film within the “Karate Kid” franchise, “Karate Kid: Legends,” initially appeared prefer it was leaving Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) by the wayside.
Nonetheless, by the top of the film, Zabka exhibits up for a cameo.
“It was really great fun shooting that scene,” director Jonathan Entwistle, 41, solely informed The Put up.
“Karate Kid: Legends” (now in theaters) follows a brand new character, Li (Ben Wang), who has educated in Kung Fu with revered martial arts grasp Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). When his mother strikes him from China to New York, he befriends native Pizzeria proprietor Victor (Joshua Jackson) and crushes on Victor’s teen daughter, Mia (Sadie Stanley).
When Li finds himself in a karate match, dealing with off towards Mia’s aggressive ex-boyfriend Connor (Aramis Knight), Mr. Han comes to assist, and likewise entreats authentic “Karate Kid” Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to assist practice Li.
Within the remaining scene, the film catches up with Daniel, who returns house to California to the late Mr. Miyagi’s previous karate dojo.
The digital camera pans out to point out that Daniel’s former bully and now pal, Johnny, is there too, dreaming up a enterprise thought of opening a pizza restaurant collectively referred to as Miyagi-Dough.
When requested if Johnny riffing in regards to the pizza restaurant was scripted or ad-libbed, Entwistle defined: “It was a little bit of both.”
“To have them both back together in that location was really, really fun,” he mentioned of Zabka, 59, and Macchio, 63. “They obviously have a rapport together from all of the years of working…we knew the concepts of what we wanted to do with the pizza and we just kind of let Billy go.”
“He loves that, he stepped right up into it.”
Though Daniel and Johnny have been enemies within the authentic 1984 film, the Netflix collection “Cobra Kai” (which ran for six seasons from 2018 to 2025) revisited the characters as adults, redeemed Johnny, and ended with the 2 males as buddies.
Capturing that scene took “maybe an afternoon” to movie, Entwistle informed The Put up. “We got to play around in the old Miyagi house and it was great.”
He clarified that they constructed a “recreation” of the home from the unique motion pictures, since he mentioned it burnt down.
Zabka’s “Karate Kid: Legends” cameo was “always planned,” he added. “I think once we knew that ‘Cobra Kai’ was coming to an end, it was just a nice moment to round out that period for the fans. So it was just very nice to just give everybody a moment to round that out.”
“Karate Kid: Legends” is now in theaters.
