Get ready to “wax on, wax off” with Jackie Chan one more time as The Karate Kid 2 is still in development and the 65-year-old martial arts star is likely to return for the sequel to the hit 2010 film, though this time he might be mentoring a different youngster. That’s because Jaden Smith, who was 12-years-old during the first outing and has only acted in three movies since, may not be reprising his role as Dre Parker for the follow-up.
The plot of the first flick revolved around a preteen who moves from Detroit to Beijing, China with his mom and immediately finds himself at odds with the neighborhood bully. He makes an unlikely friend in Mr. Han though, the aging maintenance man who doubles as a kung fu master and teaches the boy the secrets of self-defense through a series of seemingly innocuous tasks.
A sequel has been in the pipeline for years, of course, but has never come to fruition. However, sources close to WGTC – the same ones who told us the leads in Ghostbusters 3 would be young teens and that a Nova movie is in development, which was seemingly confirmed today by MCU Cosmic – tell us that it’s still in the works but we don’t yet know if Smith will be brought back or if Chan will instead be teaching someone else how to properly defend themselves.
The 2010 feature was a reboot of the popular The Karate Kid series and was the franchise’s highest-grossing installment to date ($359.1 million). Shortly after its release, a second chapter was said to be in development with much of the main cast set to reprise their roles. Breck Eisner was initially going to direct, but those plans changed in 2014.
Three years later, though, the filmmaker was back on board to helm the sequel with a new script being written. That was the last fans heard of any potential follow-up until now, though. But as we said above, The Karate Kid 2 is indeed still happening and once we learn more about the studio’s plans for it, we’ll be sure to let you know.