“It’s like Lady And The Tramp but with real people,” Sylvester Stallone says of his in-progress Rocky prequel script.
Creed help keep the Rocky flame alive for a generation of movie-goers, but franchise star and creator Sylvester Stallone has said he’s working on a prequel that will explore Balboa’s early years.
Speaking on the Inspire Me! podcast (via World of Reel), Stallone revealed that his script is a working progress, adding that “I wrote a few pages of it and it just seems to write itself.”
The actor and filmmaker than said that his prequel would catch up with Robert ‘Rocky’ Balboa while he’s still a teenager. Stallone suggested we’d see “Adrian at 15, Rocky at 17, Paulie, moving to a new neighbourhood, Rocky’s a bad boy.”
The veteran action star also said his prequel was “almost like Lady And The Tramp but with real people” – a reference to the 1955 animated Disney film about the romantic relationship between two dogs.
A quick scan of the Internet tells us that Balboa was born in Philadelphia in June 1945, which means Stallone’s prequel would take place in 1962. The story would then presumably explore how he got into boxing, and show some of the bouts he fought in before the events of 1976’s Rocky.
Read more: Creed III review | The franchise that keeps on swinging
Stallone had a rather public falling out with producer Irwin Winkler in 2022, which is why Rocky was conspicuously absent from the 2023 sequel, Creed III. While that spin-off franchise’s star Michael B Jordan (who plays the titular Adonis Creed) has said that a fourth film in that series is definitely happening, a Rocky prequel would at least allow Stallone to continue the series in his own direction. It’s not presently clear where Stallone stands legally here, however; Winkler owns the rights to Rocky and has done so since 1976.
In an interview with Sirius XM, Stallone called Winkler a “parasite”, adding that “you can’t make peace with someone who’s been so nefarious, in my opinion.”
If a Rocky prequel is to happen, some bridge-building, hatchet-burying and olive branch-proffering (choose your own hackneyed phrase) are probably required beforehand.
More on this as we get it. In the meantime, do let us know your predictions for the Rocky prequel’s title. Our current guesses are Balboa: Day One and Rocky Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
