KARATE KID 2 (In Development)

• KARATE KID 2

Jaden Smith with the Original Karate Kid

It might not have been everyones favorite film, but the Karate Kid cost $40 million to make and managed to make a little over $300 million in the Box office. A sequel to The Karate Kid was clearly a no-brainer, and, following a previous draft by the Kung-Fu Panda team of Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff, the job of writing Karate Kid 2 has now fallen to Zak Penn.

Absolutely no details about the direction of the follow-up are yet being revealed, although there's been speculation that, in a reversal of the original Ralph Macchio Karate Kid 2, the action might take us from East to West. Columbia pictures are tight-lipped on the subject. Maybe Jaden Smith could actually learn the right martial art this time.

Zak Penn contributed to the second and third X-Men movies and wrote Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk. He's since been beavering away on SyFy's series Alphas. It's not clear yet whether his Karate Kid 2 is an overhaul of what's already been written, or a start-over from scratch.

As before, Jaden's dad Will Smith is producing Karate Kid 2 with James Lassiter and Ken Stovitz. Jaden, obviously, is expected to be back, and all involved are hoping that Jackie Chan will join him again.