Michael B. Jordan is set to direct Creed IV.
The 36-year-old actor made his debut feature film behind the camera with Creed III – which grossed more than $275 million worldwide after being released in March — and the film’s producer Irwin Winkler has confirmed that a follow-up is in the works and bosses want to get the star back at the helm because he did such a good job last time.
“We are planning to do Creed IV right now. We have a really good story [and] a really good plot. We got a little delayed because of the strikes, but about a year from now we’re going into pre-production,” Irwin said at Deadline‘s Contenders Film: Los Angeles event on Saturday, Nov. 18.
Confirming Jordan — who plays the lead role of Adonis Creed in the franchise — will be back to direct, he added: “He will be. He did such a great job — he was comfortable with the camera.”
“[We’re] just glad that this one worked and people want to see more,” said his producing partner, Elizabeth Raposo.
The movie series is a spinoff from the Rocky films and has so far grossed over $663 million globally in total.
And Irwin praised the franchise’s “beautiful vision” for keeping links to the Rocky world while also being a “wholly new and different experience.”
“Michael and the creative team had the beautiful vision from the start to create a wholly new and different experience for this movie. It had to be firmly cemented in what we all [know] the Creed and Rocky movies for … it had to have great action, boxing, but we also really examined what kind of movie we were making. And a lot of that, those early days with Michael were spent crafting how we were looking at the Damian character, which is why I think everyone responded to the depth, not only on the page, but also on the screen. You spend half the movie having deep sympathy for him and understanding his vulnerability,” he said of Creed III.
