‘Creed’: The Story Behind Rocky Balboa’s Unexpected Comeback in Ryan Coogler’s Spinoff

As far as Sylvester Stallone was concerned, Rocky Balboa was the perfect swan song for his most iconic character. “When Rocky waves goodbye, that was a goodbye to the audience and a thank-you,” he told Deadline in 2016.

Then a young, hungry director came calling. Fresh out of film school and before shooting even a frame of his debut Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler found himself pitching a dramatically different take on the Rocky story, directly to the man himself. Creed would see an aging Rocky train young boxer Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) — the illegitimate son of rival turned friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) — while the Italian Stallion grapples with potentially fatal non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Stallone was unconvinced. Not only had he parted with Rocky and the character’s millions of fans, but now his champion would be waging a totally different kind of fight — one taking place outside the ring. Shouldn’t he just leave well enough alone?

For his part, Coogler was grateful just for the opportunity to share his ideas with a legend. “I could tell Sly was like, ‘This kid is out of his mind.’ But I was like, ‘It’s all good. At least I got a picture with him that I can show my dad,’” the director told The Los Angeles Times in 2015.

In fact, Coogler credits his father Ira for his lifelong love of the Rocky franchise. He has said that from an early age, his dad had him watch the films many times, particularly Rocky II. It would seem to be the perfect match, and an opportunity to bring Rocky into the present day while still honoring the entire film series and its considerable impact.

When Coogler’s father was afflicted with a mysterious neuromuscular condition (he was later diagnosed with a vitamin deficiency, though the deterioration in his mobility was irreversible), he had some big questions to contend with. “What makes you a man? What’s the definition of masculinity?” Coogler told Deadline, adding, “When that strength goes away, is he still that same person? What is the relationship between a father and a son?”

Creed would prove to be the perfect vehicle for Coogler to grapple with those questions. He has revealed that the film’s storyline evolved through a deeply personal examination of what his life would be like if his father hadn’t been around. With him instead only knowing a mythology about the man.

Those themes would take on heartbreaking significance for Stallone when, just months after first meeting Coogler, his 36-year-old son Sage died of a heart attack. While Stallone contended with this personal tragedy, Coogler channeled his own anxieties and vulnerability into the breakthrough that was Fruitvale Station. (That film, also starring Jordan, is based on a real story of a man shot and killed by a police officer at a San Francisco transit station; the American Film Institute named it one of their Top 10 films of 2013.)

After seeing the movie, Stallone was finally warming to the idea of letting Coogler bring Rocky out of retirement. But he wondered what actor would be talented enough to carry on the legacy of Weathers’ Apollo and be up to the grueling physical and mental challenge of training to become the young boxer Adonis Creed.

The answer was, of course, Michael B. Jordan. When Stallone finally met the young Fruitvale Station star, the two had an instant chemistry. Within 10 minutes, Stallone was already teaching Jordan boxing combinations.

So after two years of lobbying by Coogler, his agents, and even Stallone’s wife Jennifer Flavin, the creator of Rocky finally agreed to bring the Italian Stallion out of retirement and hand Coogler the reins. In his Deadline interview, Stallone remarked, “There was just something about this kid who was very, very physical in his manner, but sensitive and emotional. It kind of reminded me…of me, truth be told. So I finally said, ‘You know what? Someone took a chance on me, once. I’m just going to throw caution to the wind and let him run with it.’”

As a meditation on fathers and sons, making Creed would prove cathartic for its creators. For Stallone, a scene in which Adonis holds up a real picture of son Sage (who played Rocky’s son in Rocky V) was a brave and heartrending expression of grief. “I wanted to pay respect to him, and share those feelings with people who have undergone a tremendous loss,” Stallone said in another interview.

Coogler, meanwhile, found the answer to his question of what makes a man. “Yeah. It’s here,” he told Deadline, pounding his heart. “That was the answer that I found in making this. This is a Rocky movie where Rocky doesn’t throw a punch, but real Rocky fans will recognize him and see that he is still the same. He still has the same strength.”

Creed — the film itself and the story of how it came to be — would end up being about legacy. About honoring the past without living in its shadow. About embracing history while carving out a new path forward. While Creed would certainly feature plenty of homages to the original Rocky films, Coogler’s film stands all on its own—a grounded, modern boxing drama that costar Tessa Thompson has called a love letter “to Black identity and the Black experience.”

Just as Rocky helps Adonis inherit Apollo’s legacy on his own terms, Stallone helped Coogler and Jordan bring their own vision of a Rocky film to the big screen. “I really didn’t feel any pressure in this process because I was fortunate enough to be working with the creator of Rocky,” Jordan said in a 2015 interview with the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. “Sly assured me that I didn’t have to worry about competing with anything. He told me that I wasn’t Rocky. He’d say, ‘You’re Creed, and I’m here to support you.’ When you have the man himself reminding you of that day in and day out, there is no pressure, and that freed me to focus on just doing the work.”

Over a decade later, history has proven Creed‘s philosophy of honoring the past while looking to the future as a winning formula. The first film was a massive box office and critical success, earning Sylvester Stallone an Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actor. It spawned two successful sequels, Creed II and Creed III, and set a new high standard for how to update a legacy franchise for a new generation. “Rocky and Adonis,” Jordan reflected in The Ringer in 2025. “It’s the passing of the torch.”

TV Guide Magazine’s Rocky 50th Anniversary Special Issue is available for order online now at Rocky.TVBooks.com, and for purchase on newsstands nationwide.