After news has started to surface that Michael B. Jordan will return to the director’s chair for yet another instalment in the CREED franchise, fans have been buzzing with excitement. While some are theorising what Creed 4 will have in store for us, others think Michael B. Jordan might have already hinted at the franchise’s future in the four-issue limited comic book series, Creed: The Next Round.
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Creed 4
According to IndieWire, which quoted videos shared by Deadline, Irwin Winkler has said that Creed IV is already in the works. However, the strikes have severely delayed it, a complication that the entire industry is feeling now. Winkler was quoted saying,
“We’re planning to do ‘Creed 4‘ right now. We think we have a perfect story, a perfect plot,” before concluding that the project should go into pre-production roughly a year from now, meaning that we probably won’t see the movie until 2025. No hints have been dropped on the narrative turn that the fourth instalment will take, but theories abound.
One such theory is that Michael B. Jordan and Co. have already hinted at what we can expect from the next movie because they have already given us a sneak peek into what we can expect from the franchise’s future and did so in a way that no one was expecting.
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Creed: The Next Round
In June of this year, following the whopping success of Creed III, Michael B. Jordan’s production company and Chartoff-Winker announced that they would be working with the Superstar Creative Team at BOOM! Studios bring MGM’s CREED franchise to life as a limited comic book series for the first time ever.
The four-issue limited comic book series continues the story ten years after the events of Creed III, placing us significantly forward to a point where Adonis Creed, the main character of the Creed franchise at the moment, is out of the ring but not wholly retired, choosing to take on the role of a coach instead, passing on his knowledge to the next generation.
The next generation is, of course, his own daughter Amara, who has now become an amateur boxer and has plenty of potential. Along with manager-wife Bianca, mom and dad are reluctant to pit their daughter against more dangerous opponents, leading her to feel smothered in her budding career.
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Being a Creed and wanting to continue her family’s legacy, Amara has to find someone who can help her fight like a Creed but will also let her fight.
What’s In Store For Creed 4?
Considering the massive jump in the story that Creed: The Next Round makes compared to the story of Creed III, there are two main possibilities for Creed IV. The first possibility is that the story will continue after Creed III left off and fill in the gap between the movie and the comic, but considering the comic takes place ten years in the future, if the creative team were to do this, they would have a countdown for how far forward they can go before they start messing with the canon events of the franchise.
On the other hand, the second possibility is that the comic stands in as a sneak peek of what we can expect from the movie series in the future, namely that the plot, the legacy, and the family name will be passed down to the next generation, for Amara to protect.
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Either way, depending on delays, you can read Creed: The Next Round while you are waiting for Creed IV in 2024/2025 and possibly even later.