Fans of the Rocky franchise will have to wait a little longer to see Michael B. Jordan’s return to the boxing ring.
According to Variety, the Black Panther star’s directorial debut Creed III has moved its release date to March 3. The film is the eighth in the storied Rocky franchise and the third to feature Jordan as Adonis Creed, the son of Rocky Balboa’s rival turned friend, Apollo Creed.
The Without Remorse actor will once again be joined by Tessa Thompson as Donnie’s girlfriend Bianca, Florian Munteanu as Viktor Drago and Phylicia Rashad as his stepmother Mary Anne. And as if he doesn’t have enough on his plate already, Jonathan Majors is playing Anderson Dame, who is rumored to be Donnie’s next challenger. However, one crucial piece of the puzzle will be missing as Creed III will be the first film in the franchise to not star Sylvester Stallone. Honestly, I’m OK with his absence. The movie is called Creed, not Rocky.
There are no details available about the plot yet, but I’m guessing it picks up after Creed II, which featured Donnie fighting Viktor, the son of Rocky’s former enemy Ivan Drago (we’ll get to him in a minute). Winning the fight brought him and Mary Anne a small measure of peace about Apollo’s death. The film also saw Rocky heading to Vancouver to reconcile with his estranged son.
“This franchise and, in particular, the themes of Creed III are deeply personal to me,” Jordan said when he was announced as the film’s director. “I look forward to sharing the next chapter of Adonis Creed’s story with the awesome responsibility of being its director and namesake.”
And in other interesting Rocky news, we might get more info on Apollo’s death, because a spinoff focused on Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago is in the works. There’s no word on what aspect of Ivan’s story the film will explore, but we hope it shows some of the trauma or emotional aftermath of killing a man in the ring. In Creed II, Ivan was bitter and still unrepentant for what he did to Apollo, but perhaps there’s more to it than what could be portrayed in a few short scenes.