Michael B. Jordan served a knockout box office opening weekend for “Creed III,” which debuted in theaters on Friday, March 3.
Domestically, it raked in $58.6 million, and overseas it earned $41.8 million, sending it over the $100 million mark and making it the most successful opening of the three “Creed” films.
Noticeably absent from Jordan’s directorial debut was Sylvester Stallone. The Hollywood veteran played an integral role in Jordan’s character Adonis Creed’s storyline in the first and second “Creed” installments.
The movies follow Apollo Creed’s son as he navigates his way out of his father’s shadow and into the ring as he becomes a boxing champion.
The third film sees Adonis take on his past with the introduction of Jonathan Majors, who portrays childhood friend-turned-antagonist Damian Anderson, without his trusted mentor Rocky Balboa, who is portrayed by Stallone.
Ahead of the release of “Creed III,” Stallone made it known that his longstanding fallout with producer Irwin Winkler and creative differences over the direction that Jordan and writers Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin, wanted to explore in the threequel meant he would not appear in the project.
“That’s a regretful situation because I know what it could have been. It was taken in a direction that is quite different than I would’ve taken it,” Stallone told The Hollywood Reporter last year.
“It’s a different philosophy — Irwin Winkler’s and Michael B. Jordan’s. I wish them well, but I’m much more of a sentimentalist. I like my heroes getting beat up, but I just don’t want them going into that dark space. I just feel people have enough darkness,” he added.
In 1976, the actor and Winkler launched the “Rocky” franchise. The “Rambo” star admittedly sold the rights of the mastermind franchise to Winkler not long after its release. In the THR interview from last November, Stallone opened up about his efforts to regain some of his rights in the cult classic that has spanned five decades.
“It’s never gonna happen. It was a deal that was done unbeknownst to me by people that I thought were close to me, and they basically gave away whatever rights I would have had,” he said.
“At the time, I was so excited to be working, and I didn’t understand this is a business. Who knew Rocky would go on for another 45 years? I’ve never used one [line of dialogue] from anyone else — and the irony is that I don’t own any of it. The people who have done literally nothing control it.”
While the fallout makes it unlikely that Sly will reprise his role as Rocky, Jordan recently said that “Creed” will always be a home for the Academy Award nominee.
“He’s a producer on this project, so he’s always around it, as much as he wants to be around it, you know,” the Sexiest Man Alive alum said during a “Creed III” promo stop at “Hot 97.”
“And [he’s] always welcome. This is a welcome home. But you know, people gotta understand everybody’s professional, and they got they own, they own thing that they doing. Everything isn’t Kumbaya, and everything isn’t always together all the time.”
