Blackstone Group Bets on Cobra Kai and 90s Sitcom Reboots
Posted on 01/14/2022
Many millennial audiences in America remember the movies, “The Karate Kid” and its sequel and part III. Cobra Kai came out originally on subscription service YouTube Red. On June 22, 2020, it was announced that the Cobra Kai show would be moving to Netflix, taking the third season with it.
Cobra Kai is an American martial arts comedy-drama streaming television series and a sequel to the original The Karate Kid films by Robert Mark Kamen. The series was created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, and stars Ralph Macchio and William “Billy” Zabka, who reprise their roles as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence. The series has high viewership on both YouTube and Netflix. In August 2021, ahead of the fourth season premiere, the series was renewed for a fifth season.
Fresh Prince star Will Smith founded Overbrook Entertainment with James Lassiter in February 1998. The name “Overbrook” is derived from Will Smith’s neighborhood in West Philadelphia. At Overbrook Entertainment, Will Smith served as an executive producer on the 2010 The Karate Kid reboot, which starred his son Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. Due to that deal, Overbrook retained rights over the Karate Kid franchise.
In 2019, Will Smith became a Co-Founder of Westbrook Media Inc. Westbrook is founded by Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, Miguel Melendez, and Ko Yada. Westbrook Media is planning on making a reboot of the series “Fresh Prince of Bel Air”. Their parent company, Westbrook Inc., furthers that mission by providing strategic, financial, legal, and operational support to its studio and media companies and developing new business opportunities for revenue growth and diversification. Westbrook houses Westbrook Studios, the premium film and television studio; Westbrook Media, an integrated IP incubator, brand content studio, and production company; Red Table Talk Productions, maker of the Emmy Award-winning Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk and Red Table Talk: The Estefans; and Good Goods, a direct-to-consumer business which creates unique consumer products around the company’s IP and talent partners.
In January 2022, Candle Media, a media company run by Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs and backed by investment capital from Blackstone Group, announced a strategic minority investment in Westbrook Inc.
Keywords: Blackstone Group LP.