Sylvester Stallone spent the first two years of the pandemic creating a new, much more serious version of Rocky IV, but has since been very vocal about his frustration with Rocky series producer Irwin Winkler, who continued to control the rights the Creed movies and spin-offs, completely excluding Stallone (on top of the money he’s already made working on the movies). Earlier this month, Stallone posted a (since deleted) Instagram plea to Irwin to give him “at least a little bit” of “what’s left” of the Rocky rights so he can “leave something of Rocky » to his children. Now the Rocky franchise will continue without Stallone, in both a third Creed film and a recently introduced Drago spin-off focusing on Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago and Florian Munteanu’s son Viktor Drago from Creed 2. Neither project will feature Stallone at all, which apparently means he’s not making any money from it, and he’s surprisingly pissed off about it: “Once again, THE PASSIVE 94-YEAR-OLD PRODUCER AND HIS SELFISH USELESS KIDS once again collect all that’s left of the bones of another great character!! !” Stallone posted on Instagram (via The Hollywood Reporter ), referring to the 91-year-old Winkler and his allegedly selfish and useless children. Stallone hints that he would never have let them do a Drago spin-off if he was in charge, adding that he feels sorry for “the fans” and that he “never wanted to take advantage of ROCKY FOR THAT GREED.” He also included “#no shame #sad day #Parasite”. (For the record, this same Stallone who never wanted to see Rocky exploit him has appeared in six Rocky movies and two Creed movies, which is more than the number of Star Wars movies Yoda has actually appeared in.) As for why Stallone doesn’t own any of Rocky, it must be one of those old Hollywood deals where the writers and creators get confused while the producers keep the rights (just ask any Marvel Comics writer), since he certainly created the character of Rocky Balboa for the first Rocky film.
