“Cobra Kai” fans, you’re in luck.
It sounds like the second season of the “Karate Kid” YouTube Premium series will arrive sooner rather than later — and we can expect some new characters when it returns.
“We are starting preproduction now, the writers are writing the episodes, we’re casting, and we’re getting going as fast as we can,” Global Head of Original Content at YouTube Susanne Daniels said at the Television Critics Association summer 2018 press tour on Friday. And while we didn’t get too many details, when asked if YouTube is casting new characters for the second season, Daniels said “some.”
“I’d like to bring it back as soon as possible,” she said, later teasing to TheWrap that the writers “have a whole plan that’s really fun for Season 2,” which will pick up right where Season 1 left off.
Daniels added that before “Cobra Kai,” the “average wait time between premiere and pickup had been six weeks,” but the popular show changed that.
“‘Cobra Kai’ was literally a week to the day, because it just came out of the box fast, and resonated [with fans],” Daniels said. “We were tracking kind of intense enthusiasm from the launch of the first trailer.”
Daniels added that ‘Cobra Kai’s’ success taught her to “trust the data” that YouTube has access to, thanks to parent company Google.
“We knew that karate kid was a really popular IP on YouTube,” she said, adding that there was a “huge appetite” from users to see what Ralph [Macchio] and Billy [William Zabka] were up to, and to “see where the ‘Karate Kid’ franchise was going to go.”
But data can only get you so far, Daniels said — the “show did the heavy lifting.”
The series, which hails from Sony Pictures Television and Overbrook Entertainment, has been met with large acclaim. The first episode has more than 41 million views, and the series scored an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or Variety Program.
Daniels admitted that it might be self-serving to say so, but added that she wished the series had earned more nominations. “We were robbed,” she said. “Emmy voters should have recognized it … in more ways than just stunts.”