After the strike paralyzed Hollywood for several months, American filming resumed in Montreal. The newspaper Learned that a series and two major Hollywood films will be filmed in the metropolis at the beginning of 2024, including the next part of the saga Karate Kid.
• Also read: End of Hollywood strike: “Good news” for Quebec film industry
These three American productions, expected in Montreal this winter, will bring a breath of fresh air to Quebec’s audiovisual industry, which has suffered greatly from the impact of the strikes by American actors and screenwriters earlier this year.
Last month, Christian Lemay, president of the Quebec Alliance of Image and Sound Technicians (AQTIS 514 IATSE), told the Journal that several Hollywood productions will move to Montreal in early 2024. Sources confirm to us that the next film in the Karate Kid saga will be one of them.
The recently announced sixth “Karate Kid” will bring Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio to the screen in their respective roles as Mr. Han and Daniel LaRusso (the hero of the saga’s very first feature film, released in 1984).
The character of Daniel LaRusso was missing from the last two films in the series, but he returned to the action in Cobrai Kai, the Netflix series derived from The Karate Kid. The legendary Jackie Chan, 69, starred alongside Jaden Smith (son of Will Smith) in the fifth film in the series, released in 2010.
The rest of the cast of the next “Karate Kid” has not yet been announced. In a video that aired on Sony Pictures’ YouTube channel two weeks ago, Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio announced that they were looking for the next Karate Kid to star alongside them in the film and that they were young would invite actors interested in submitting their application to the website KarateKidCasting.com
Director Jonathan Entwistle (“I’m Not Okay with This”) will helm the new “Karate Kid.” Filming, originally scheduled for this fall (but delayed by the actors’ strike), is scheduled to begin in early April. The film’s release date is set for December 13, 2024.
A film with Ryan Reynolds
Photo AFP
According to our information, Montreal will also host the action film “Mayday” this winter, which will star Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds. Filming on this Skydance and Apple Original Films production is scheduled to begin at the end of February and last 15 weeks.
According to trade site Deadline Hollywood, British actor Kenneth Branagh will also be part of the cast.
Finally, The Last Frontier, a large-scale TV series produced for the Apple TV+ platform, will also be filmed in the metropolis from the end of January to the beginning of August. Also note that filming of the third season of Ghosts, a CBS network series, resumed this week in Montreal.