There’s a great joke in Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs where a TV movie reviewer does a review of Rocky 5-Thousand. It was funny because there had only been four Rocky films at that point. However, in an era before the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Harry Potter films, four was a lot in one series. We stand today with six movies in the series, with Rocky Balboa about to appear in his seventh film since 1976. Will this finally wrap up the franchise? According to star Sylvester Stallone, no, not even close. The Spaceballs joke is becoming significantly less funny.
Rocky will transition from fighter to trainer when Creed premieres later this month. For some, that would seem like the perfect place to wrap up the movies. The student becomes the teacher and passes on his skills to the next generation. That’s apparently not enough for Stallone, however, as according to Yahoo he literally wants to play this role until he’s dead.
There's more to go...I would like to follow this character until eventually he's an angel.
At this rate, a supernatural sequel in which an angel Rocky fights the devil in a boxing match is probably the only place left for the franchise to go. While there is already talk about possible sequels to Creed (the movie’s buzz has been very strong and the people who have seen the film have positive things to say), there’s no word in any of that news that Stallone would return as Rocky again. Creed is meant to work as a spinoff to the Rocky series, not really a sequel, so once Rocky has passed on his wisdom, one would think that Michael B. Jordan’s character would then go off and have his own adventures, not attached to any of the previous films.
Of course, it’s also theoretically possible that we could see more actual Rocky movies, even alongside Creed sequels. The last straight Stallone movie, Rocky Balboa, felt like a good place to cap those movies off, but hey, this is the era of the "cinematic universe" so maybe Rocky is going to get one, too. If it weren't for the Creed movies, we would fully expect to see Rocky get the reboot treatment, but it's highly unlikely that we'll get that alongside the new movie at the same time. We're going to stick with unlikely, because in Hollywood, nothing is impossible.
Is there another Rocky story left to tell? Or should Balboa just be the permanent trainer for Adonis Creed? We're not sure Sylvester Stallone can hold a candle to Burgess Meredith, but we can’t say we wouldn’t mind watching him try.
