Watch the Unseen Pitch Trailer That Got Cobra Kai Made

After six seasons of action-packed, nostalgic karate action, it’s easy to see why Cobra Kai worked. But nine years ago, when word of the show first broke, even the biggest fans—such as me—were skeptical. Really? A Karate Kid TV show? Aren’t those guys like 60? Imagine how an executive must have felt when Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald stepped into their offices with the idea to continue to this beloved 1980s franchise as a streaming show.

Of course, though, it ended up working out. YouTube Red made the show and eventually Netflix took it over. But to get over that initial hump, the creators put together a pitch trailer using footage from a ton of old movies to explain the tone of the show. A trailer that, until today, had never been made public.

Hurwitz just posted the trailer, edited by Muppets Mayhem‘s Jeff Yorkes, and it’s so awesome, I’m ready to take the whole ride again.

EXCLUSIVE: Check out the Mock Trailer that helped us sell Cobra Kai!

In 2017, we had the daunting task of trying to explain to buyers in Hollywood what we envisioned Cobra Kai to look and feel like. Sure, we had a detailed pitch and Ralph Macchio and William Zabka joining us in… pic.twitter.com/gFqQ1yuudo

— Jon Hurwitz (@jonhurwitz) February 27, 2025

As you can read in the longer post there, the pitch trailer is set to AC/DC’s hit song, “Thunderstruck.” It’s a song the team long wanted to use on the show but was deemed too expensive. However, by season six, they finally got it into the final set of episodes. It worked already but now knowing how it ties back here is an even better, full-circle moment.

It’s also fun to see how the show evolved a bit from these early ideas. Here Daniel LaRusso is portrayed as some big-time Los Angeles millionaire living a swanky, lavish lifestyle. On the show, Daniel is certainly very well off, but he’s much, much more grounded than it seems was initially thought. You have to wonder how much that was Ralph Macchio himself shaping the character ever so slightly.

Either way, it worked out. Six seasons and 65 episodes later, Cobra Kai did things no sequel as ever done before. We wrote about that here. So it’s very, very cool to see where it all began.

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