Film by Harald Zwart
The Karate Kid is a 2010 martial arts drama film directed by Harald Zwart from a screenplay by Christopher Murphey, based on a story by Robert Mark Kamen. It serves as the fifth film in The Karate Kid franchise. The film stars Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan in the lead roles, with Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han, Zhenwei Wang, Luke Carberry, Zhensu Wu, Zhiheng Wang, and Yu Rongguang in supporting roles. The story follows 12-year-old Dre Parker from Detroit, who moves to Beijing, China with his widowed mother Sherry and runs afoul of the neighborhood bully Cheng. He makes an unlikely ally in the form of an ageing maintenance man, Mr. Han, a kung fu master who teaches him the secrets of self-defense.
Principal photography of the film took place in Beijing, China, beginning in July 2009 and ending on October. The Karate Kid premiered at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood, California on June 7, 2010, and was released in the United States on June 11, by Sony Pictures Releasing through its Columbia Pictures label, and on June 22 in China and August 5 in Hong Kong, by EDKO. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and earned $359.1 million worldwide on a $40 million budget, making it the highest-grossing film of the series.
The film serves as a remake of the 1984 film of the same name following a similar narrative but with the setting moved to China, and the martial art changed (despite the film's title) from karate to kung fu. The announcement of the sixth film, Karate Kid: Legends (2025), with Chan and original star Ralph Macchio reprising their roles, retconned the film, placing it in the same fictional universe of the original films.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.