Progress has been slow with the planned Ivan Dragon solo movie, according to its star Dolph Lundgren.
Back in July of last year, we heard that another Rocky spin-off movie was in the works, this time following the story of one Ivan ‘If he dies, he dies’ Drago, the Soviet nemesis of Rocky Balboa who was fleshed out with a more human complexion in 2018’s Creed II.
The story was particularly interesting because shortly after announcing the existence of the project, Lundgren who plays Drago, quickly walked back his involvement after finding out that his long-time pal Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa himself) was no longer involved with the franchise, following an epic fallout with the rights holders to the films.
Hopefully, the pair have figured things out and it seems that the project is still happening, although progress looks to be slow with the initial script not being to the tastes of all involved. Speaking to Screen Rant, Lundgren had this to say about the film: “yeah, MGM has a project on the books. There’s been a script that nobody really liked. Now, they’re, as far as I know, looking for new writer, and to try to tap back into that world”.
He added that “there was a movie I did called Creed II, where it kind of opens, actually, in Ukraine. So, it’s interesting. Now, it’s more interesting than it was 2018. The idea was to sort of go back and start back in Ukraine again, in Kyiv, but now, of course, there is war going on. There’s a reason for a father and son to come to America. So it’s a little bit of an immigration slash fighter story”.
Rewriting continues. The original script was penned by Robert Lawton who also wrote the spec script, Becoming Rocky. For whatever reason, Lawton’s take on fleshing out Drago doesn’t seem to have impressed enough for it to move forwards so we’ll see what happens next for the project.
This year saw director and star, Michael B Jordan take the long-running Rocky series into its deepest study on character yet with the third Creed spin-off film, so we’d be really intrigued to see that ethos applied to the legendary Ivan Drago. Will it happen? Maybe, we’ll certainly let you know as we hear more.
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
