Fans were introduced to the Spy Kids franchise 20 years ago when the first movie premiered on March 30, 2001.
Starring Daryl Sabara, Alexa PenaVega, Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino and more, the first film followed two kids who became spies in attempt to save their ex-spy parents from an evil mastermind. Following the flick’s success, two more movies with the original cast hit theaters and a fourth one later on.
In 2002, viewers took a trip to the Island of Lost Dreams where, according to Daryl during an April 2020 Instagram Live, “In the second movie we flew to Costa Rica and filmed on an active volcano, which was crazy.” Then, when Spy Kids 3 premiered, young fans got a chance to see their favorite characters in 3-D, which was pretty epic. Years later, in January 2021, it was announced that the original filmmaker, Robert Rodriguez, would reboot the series for new reimagined films.
“Robert Rodriguez is partnering with Skydance Media and Spyglass Media Group to relaunch the family movie franchise,” The Hollywood Reporter announced at the time.
Although it’s not clear whether to not any of the original cast is involved just yet, it’ll be great to see our favorite fictional family on-screen once again. During Comic Con’s director’s panel in June 2020, Robert got real about the movie’s success 20 years ago.
“For me, it was a big victory, and it was an important one for things to follow, to have the kids in Spy Kids be a Latin family,” he said at the time, per Collider. “It had just never been done before. When you’re doing anything that’s new — this just happens to be about diversity, but it could be anything — when you’re doing anything new, you’re gonna get questioned. And you have to have a good answer, because they’re not being dicks or anything, they’ve just never seen it before … So they went with it, then of course there’s like four [Spy Kids films in the franchise] and now we’re rebooting it.”
Of course, the Spy Kids film’s were a major part of the stars’ careers, but what are they up to now? Well, it turns out, they’ve accomplished so much since the movie! Some of them landed some major roles, while others stepped away to start a family of their own — but either way, they’ve come such a long way. Plus, some of them have had some pretty major physical transformations. Click through our gallery to see what the cast of Spy Kids is doing now.
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