Eric Roberts wants to make a pair of legacy sequels to Best of the Best, and hopes that fans will make it happen via an online campaign. Roberts, who starred along with Phillip Rhee and Chris Penn in the first two films, bowed out of the franchise when it went direct-to-video beginning with 1995’s Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back. Rhee was the only original star to carry the third and fourth installments, which Roberts told ComicBook.com “kind of ruined” the franchise. Nevertheless, ’80s and ’90s kids have a lot of fondness for the characters, so there have been occasional rumors about a reboot or revival.
Speaking with Roberts in support of his upcoming movie The Private Eye, ComicBook.com asked whether he would be open to returning to the role of Olympic-level martial artist Alex Grady again. Roberts suggested that if fans want to see that, they should get loud about it online.
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“The franchise got kind of ruined with three and four,” Roberts told ComicBook.com. “”Get on the internet and start a campagin, and we’ll do five and six.”
The actor doesn’t seem to have seen many legacy sequels, though; the idea of retroactive continuity doesn’t enter into his thinking, and as a result, he thinks making a direct sequel is the only way to go, now that digital video has made it easy to find the original sequels.
“We can’t [ignore them] anymore, because they’re accessible,” Roberts said. “You can’t pretend, because they’re there. You have to incorporate those stories in what’s happening with five and six because they are there, even though they are hard to watch.”
The first Best of the Best movie centered on a team of American martial artists who face off against the South Korean national team. The movie, riding on the success of other martial arts movies like The Karate Kid, took the tournament extremely seriously, and had a number of emotionally-charged subplots that made it about more than just the tournament. In the second movie, one of the team members (Chris Penn) is fighting in an underground fight club and is killed during competition, leading two of his teammates (Rhee and Roberts) to compete to avenge his death. At that point, the series tipped over from being sports movies into action movies, and the third and fourth films featured Rhee as a gun-toting action hero.
Roberts’s The Private Eye will be released on February 9. You can read the synopsis below.
Private investigator Mort Madison (Matt Rife) has seen his better days. A mysterious woman, Michelle (Clare Grant) hires him to spy on David (Elliot), whom he believed to be her lover. In the detective process Mort himself falls in love with Michelle and decides the only way he can be with her is by eliminating David from the equation. Mort hopes this will entice Michelle to run away with him and live happily ever after only to reveal a mind-blowing twist.
