'Cobra Kai' creators explain how they turned their obsession with 'The Karate Kid' into YouTube Red's first hit show, and tease season 2

With a green light to make the show, Hurwitz, Schlossberg, and Heald then went to Zabka with the good news.

"It was just mind blowing to him," Heald said of telling Zabka. "It took two or three times for him to understand that we were going to further the story of Johnny. He was in shock. There's not a day that's gone by that Billy hasn't thought about Johnny Lawrence because it's such an iconic role for him. The character never really left him."

With Zabka on board, the trio turned their attention to Macchio, which they knew right away was going to be a harder sell.

"None of us knew him but we had heard he was very hesitant to engage with anything 'Karate Kid' related over the years," Heald said.

As the decades passed, "The Karate Kid" continued to grow a loyal fan base, but like many things from the 1980s, the movie became a punchline. The memorable scenes became fodder as YouTube grew in popularity and the song from the movie, "You're the Best," also became a staple in the comedy community. And it didn't help that the movies made after 1986's "The Karate Kid Part II" — "The Karate Kid Part III" (1989), "The Next Karate Kid" (1994) and Jaden Smith's "The Karate Kid" (2010) — were nowhere as popular as the first two movies.

But Hurwitz, Schlossberg, and Heald didn't take "no" for an answer and finally got a lunch meeting with Macchio in New York.

"And that lunch turned into a four-hour lunch where we pitched him the whole show and that we were not trying to make a 'Harold & Kumar' or 'Hot Tub Time Machine' experience with this show," Heald said. "We told him it has this new way in because the guys are adults now. Ralph was not expecting any of that and a couple of days later we had a two-hour phone call with him, and a few days later another two-hour phone call, and by the end of that week Ralph was in."

Looking back on the process Macchio went through with them to finally agree to do the role, they respect the time he took to finally say "yes."

"Because he knew if he came back as Daniel it would be a big deal to people, not just in this country but all over the world, and he wanted to make sure it was the right decision to do," Hurwitz said.

"He wanted to make sure we had answers to the big questions that he had," Schlossberg added. "He didn't want to hear, 'That's a great question we'll figure that out.' He wanted to make sure we thought about this beyond memorizing a pitch."

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