Reboots and remakes? So last decade. Hollywood’s latest trend is the lega-sequel, and here are five to check out.
Move over, reboots and remakes. The hottest Hollywood trend now is the legacy sequel — or ‘lega-sequel’ if you want to sound cool at dinner parties. These films live in the same universe as the originals, often bringing back beloved characters while passing the torch to a fresh cast. Think nostalgia meets a shiny new toy — lega-sequels provide fan service to lovers of the original movies while providing a fresh spin to attract a new generation of audiences.
Here’s your boarding pass into five of the most epic cinematic returns.
Karate Kid: Legends
What started in 1984 with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita), and a crane kick that became an iconic pop culture moment has quietly turned into one of the most tangled cinematic universes this side of Marvel. We’ve had sequels, spin-offs, a Hilary Swank detour (1994’s The Next Karate Kid), and a 2010 rebooted (and later retconned) ‘karate’ movie about … kung fu in China.
Now, Karate Kid: Legends pulls the disparate threads together, revealing that Mr Miyagi and Mr Han (Jackie Chan) were lifelong pals. Teaming up with a grown-up Daniel, Han trains his great-nephew Li Fong (Ben Wang) for a high-stakes New York tournament. And yes, there’s a cheeky nod to the hit Netflix series Cobra Kai, which focuses on Daniel’s rival, Johnny Lawrence. Miyagiverse? More like Miyagi-multiverse.
</a>
Kung fu prodigy Li Fong enters a karate competition. Guided by the wisdom of his teachers Mr Han and Daniel LaRusso, Li merges their unique styles to prepare for an epic showdown.
View Details
Freakier Friday
Body swaps are comedy gold — and Freaky Friday is the gold standard. Two decades after Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) exchanged lives, the chaos returns — quadrupled. This time, Anna trades bodies with her daughter Harper (Julia Butters), while Tess ends up in the body of her future step-granddaughter Lily (Sophia Hammons).
Freakier Friday is a four-way freak-out with engagements, blended families, and enough identity confusion to make a soap opera blush. For millennials, it’s a nostalgia hit. For Gen Z, it’s an introduction to the pure joy of watching people panic while speaking in someone else’s voice.
</a>
A mother and daughter don't relate to each other on anything. Then one night a little mystic mayhem changes their lives and they wake up to the biggest freak-out ever…
View Details
Twisters
Forget aliens or superheroes — nothing’s scarier (or more jaw-dropping) than Mother Nature in a bad mood. The 1996 hit Twister made tornado-chasing cool, but it’s taken nearly three decades for the disaster drama to return.
2024’s Twisters brings fresh faces — Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos — into the eye of the storm, with a few sly nods to the original (hello, Dorothy V). No returning characters, but plenty of bone-rattling spectacle, directed by Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung. Who knew prestige drama directors could also whip up a Category 5 thrill ride?
</a>
Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years is lured back to the open plains by her friend to test a new tracking system.
View Details
Mad Max: Fury Road
A legacy sequel by technicality, George Miller’s Fury Road serves as a soft reboot of Mad Max. Miller himself refrains from calling it a ‘reboot’, opting to bill it as a ‘revisit’. Potayto, potahto. Whatever the right term is, Fury Road is cinematic thunder — and that’s all that matters. After decades of delays, desert blooms, and even thoughts of going animated, Miller recast Max (Tom Hardy) and unleashed a dust-choked fever dream of roaring engines and feminist fury.
The 2015 big-screen sensation nabbed 10 Oscar nominations (winning six) and rewrote the rulebook for action movies. And in 2024, Miller roared back with Furiosa, proving the wasteland is still very much alive — and very, very loud.
</a>
Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years is lured back to the open plains by her friend to test a new tracking system.
View Details
Tron: Legacy
In 1982, Tron was a neon-soaked parade of arcade cool and groundbreaking VFX. The movie follows computer programmer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) as he enters a digital video game realm called the Grid and fights for survival. It became a cult classic, inspired a 2003 video game sequel, and after years of teasing, returned in 2010 with Tron: Legacy.
With Daft Punk’s iconic score and Bridges pulling double duty as hero and villain (thanks to digital de-ageing), it was sleek, hypnotic, and a little bit trippy. Now, in 2025, Tron: Ares takes the leap from Grid to the real world, with Jared Leto leading the charge and Bridges back for more. Get ready to derezz your expectations.
Images: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, ©2025 CTMG. All Rights Reserved., © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., © 2025 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.