Ryan Coogler’s Creed has breathed new life into the Rocky legacy and made a pretty penny in the process with more than $103 million in takings in North America alone. In addition to the knockout box office performance, the critical praise has been equally impressive, Sylvester Stallone picked up a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and should be in line for an Academy Award nomination. Given the wealth of positivity for the movie, MGM is keen to keep the franchise going and have tentatively set a November 2017 release date for the untitled sequel.

Co-writer and director Ryan Coogler have been in high demand since Creed hit cinemas; the filmmaker is currently in talks with Marvel to helm Black Panther a sought after gig that will likely mean Coogler won’t be back to direct Creed 2. In a recent interview, Sylvester Stallone hinted that the sequel may have to move forward without Coogler in the hot seat.

“I know Ryan is probably going to be gone for a couple of years. So there will be a quandary on: Do we work with another director and have Ryan produce, or do we wait? There’s a diminishing time acceptance of a sequel. Now they are cranking them out in a year.”

Black Panther is due for release February 16, 2018, and as we all know Marvel movies are an intense process, so finding the time to direct Creed 2 will be nigh on impossible. As to what the sequel might be about, Stallone has revealed that Coogler was toying with the idea of going back to an earlier point in Rocky’s history.

“Ryan has some ideas of going forward and backward and actually seeing Rocky and Apollo together. Think of The Godfather 2. That’s what he was thinking of, which was kind of ambitious.” 

Creed arrives in the UK on January 15.