YouTube attracts a whopping 1.5 billion viewers every month, but its streaming service, YouTube Red, hasn’t broken through like competitors Netflix and Hulu. But the Google-owned company is making a big push in 2018 with original content like Dallas & Robo, an “adult cartoon” featuring John Cena and Kat Dennings; the film festival favorite Bodied; and a Karate Kid spinoff.
Cobra Kai is set 30 years after the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) is still steaming from losing to Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and his pesky crane technique. It also doesn’t help that while Daniel is living the happy life of a family man (even without his beloved mentor Mr. Miyagi, played by the late Pat Morita), Johnny is a drunk who sleeps on the floor. He seeks redemption, however, by reopening the Cobra Kai karate dojo and (presumably) listening to Joe Esposito songs.
The 10-episode series, which was created by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald, is an exception to YouTube Red’s rule of, as Vulture wrote, avoiding “massive campaigns some streaming networks have put behind big projects.” Instead, the “bulk of the marketing will be released the day or day after, or possibly even the week after the show is released,” YouTube’s global content chief Susanne Daniels noted, “so that when we’re telling viewers to go check out the show, they can click and go check out the show.”
That being said, Cobra Kai premieres on May 2.
