In 2015, nine years after he’d reprised Rocky Balboa in the same-named movie following a 16-year absence from the role, Sylvester Stallone returned to the character that made him famous. This time around, though, he wasn’t playing Rocky as the main protagonist, as Creed instead saw Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed filling that position. In fact, originally the plan was for Rocky to die in the spinoff, but Stallone has explained why he nixed that idea immediately.
While I remember speculating, like so many did, that Rocky might die when Creed came out, I didn’t realize director and co-writer Ryan Coogler intended for this to happen in the original script. This was initially why Stallone didn’t want to do Creed, with the actor saying the following while breaking down his most iconic characters with GQ:
