Though it seemed as though Sylvester Stallone had hung up his boxing gloves for good in the wake of 2006’s Rocky Balboa, the actor was given the chance to reprise his role as the Italian Stallion for Ryan Coogler’s acclaimed spinoff, Creed.
Such was the success of Coogler’s hard-hitting drama – pulling in close to $103 million domestically – that Stallone himself is beginning to marinate on the possibility of a sequel, and it’s one that could welcome back a fellow franchise titan into the ring. That actor in question is Carl Weathers, who first appeared in the Rocky series as Sly’s fierce opponent, before going on to become his close friend and mentor.
But welcoming Weathers back to the series would naturally require a creative workaround, considering that his Apollo Creed met his demise by the gigantic hand of Ivan Drogo (Dolph Lundgren) in Rocky IV. Speaking to Variety, Stallone admitted that in order for Coogler’s follow-up to incorporate Apollo into the mix, it would need to be pitched as more of a prequel.
“Ryan has some ideas of going forward and backward and actually seeing Rocky and Apollo together,” Stallone revealed. “Think of The Godfather 2. That’s what he was thinking of, which was kind of ambitious.” Stallone said he’d recently bumped into Weathers, who looked like he was still in good shape. “I can’t believe I got in the ring with him,” he says. “Even if it was play fighting.”
Jumping back and forth between timelines would certainly be ambitious, and unlike anything we’ve seen in a modern boxing movie. Even still, Coogler is on the verge of inking a deal with Marvel to helm Black Panther, which puts his future as Creed director in doubt. But, that hasn’t dampened Stallone’s enthusiasm to continue the arc of Adonis Creed.
“You’ll have him face a different opponent, which I would say is a more ferocious, big Russian,” Stallone says. “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.”
Creed has already pummelled its way into theaters in the US, while UK moviegoers can look forward to Ryan Coogler’s Rocky spinoff making the trip across the pond in time for January 15.