Home Entertainment CREED sequel in development; might bring back Apollo Creed

CREED sequel in development; might bring back Apollo Creed

3 min read
0

Creed05720.dng

Let’s not mince words: Creed was effing brilliant! And not only has the Ryan Coogler directed sequel/reboot of the Rocky franchise wowed critics around the world, but audiences are responding to it as well. In the month or so that it’s been on the circuit, it’s pulled in about $115 million dollars – which may not seem a lot when stacked up next to the billions Star Wars is bringing in, but when its a $35 million adult sports drama resurrecting a 30 year old franchise, I think it’s safe to say that that’s a knockout!

And MGM CEO Gary Barber definitely agrees as he told Variety just what that success meant:

 “There’s no doubt that we’re making a Creed 2.”

Just when that sequel will happen though or whether Coogler will return to direct – he’s going to get busy real soon with Marvel’s Black Panther – is still uncertain at the moment, as franchise star Sylvester Stallone explained.

“I know Ryan is probably going to be gone for a couple years. So there will be a quandary on: Do we work with another director and have Ryan produce, or do we wait? There’s a diminishing time acceptance of a sequel. Now they are cranking them out in a year.”

Creed03125.dng

But while the timetable for Creed 2 may be uncertain, it’s definitely happening. And you would think that the most logical narrative course of this sequel would be to focus further on Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed – the troubled son of Rocky’s ex-rival/best friend, the late Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), who finally learned to accept his father’s legacy and become a prime boxer himself in this film – but it seems that even that is uncertain at the moment as Stallone and co are just spitballing ideas.

And one of the wackier ideas is that Creed 2 will be some kind of prequel, going back in time to before Apollo died in Rocky IV and focusing on the the two rivals again.

“Ryan has some ideas of going forward and backward and actually seeing Rocky and Apollo togethe. “Think of ‘The Godfather 2.’ That’s what he was thinking of, which was kind of ambitious.”

Stallone went to explain that he’d recently run into Weathers who still looked in good enough shape to reprise the role. Stallone was seemingly so in awe of Weathers’ physique that he exclaimed that “I can’t believe I got in the ring with him. Even if it was play fighting.”

rocky-creed1

Jordan isn’t as convinced of the prequel idea though, teasingly saying what we’re all probably thinking:

“So it’s going to be a CGI-version of Sly?”

But not to worry, the prequel idea is just one of many, and of course the continuation of Adonis’ story is also right up there. And Stallone already has a pitch for how the tale of Jordan’s character can sort of mirror his own, but still bring in its own twist in the form of Creed love interest Theresa Thompson, whose musician character was slowly going deaf.

“You’ll have him face a different opponent, which I would say is a more ferocious, big Russian. You can start to meld my experiences and then you start to bring different cultures into it. And you can see what’s happening with the Russians today in America. The complication will come with the girl’s ambition, because she’s not Adrian. She has places to go, things to see, the clock is running on her hearing.”

And before somebody suggests that this Russian boxer be Ivan Drago’s son (Y’know, so Adonis is fighting the son of the man that killed his father), just remember that they pumped Drago so full of steroids that I would be surprised if his man-parts weren’t glowing radioactive green, much less capable of producing offspring. Personally though, I just want to see more of Jordan’s Adonis doing his own thing, and not just walking down the same road that Stallone’s Rocky did. He already had enough of that in Creed and it worked brilliantly in that case, but now it’s time to beat/punch his own path.

Last Updated: January 7, 2016

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

A Blacula reboot is in development

One of the most unlikely horror characters is getting a reboot. …