‘Creed’ Movie Will Not Feature Paulie Or Duke, And Will Rocky Live Or Die? [Possible Spoilers]
The Creed movie set to continue the mythos established by Rocky and it’s sequels, including Rocky Balboa, will be omitting two central characters to the original franchise.
Paulie (Burt Young) and Duke (Tony Burton) will not return for the new film, according to the cast list at IMDb.
Not much has been known to this point about the film — only that Rocky will train the son or grandson of Apollo Creed (there’s some confusion).
However, the newly released list of credits reveals a few things of interest to Rocky fans.
For starters, Phylicia Rashad (The Cosby Show) will step in to the role of Apollo’s wife Mary Anne Creed. Sylvia Meals originally took on the part for Rocky II and Rocky IV.
Meals had a connection to Cosby appearing in one episode of The Cosby Mysteries — at least let’s hope that’s the only connection she has to Cosby.
She last appeared in Tournament of Dreams, but other than that, has only the four acting credits and was not asked to return to the role.
Creed will also feature Graham McTavish as Tommy Holiday, Tessa Thompson as Bianca, and Tony Bellew as “Pretty” Ricky Conlan.
No idea on how big of a role that Conlan will have in the film, but going from the cast list, there are several other characters attached to him, so it’s possible he’ll be the guy squaring off against Jordan in the film’s climactic bout, though nothing is known for sure at this point, at least to members of the public.
For the most part, the list of talent is full of unknowns, but Ryan Coogler (the writer and director) has Fruitvale Station to his credit, so fans are encouraged that he’ll be able to do just fine without a bunch of A-listers.
The one outlier that fans are not too comfortable with — this mystery illness (presumably cancer) that Rocky Balboa has in the film.
While it certainly doesn’t sound encouraging for those of us who’ve stuck with the big guy for nearly 40 years, it doesn’t appear that the illness will be taking him from fans, in this film anyway.
That’s because the last page of the Creed movie script was recently tweeted by Sly himself.
While most of the text is safely indiscernible, we do know, from this draft anyway, that Rocky is there at the end of the final fight. That scene is followed up by one with Creed and Bianca at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rocky is nowhere to be found, so he could be dead, but if so, we won’t have to go through the agony of seeing it on screen.
So what do you think, Rocky fans? Is the Creed movie going to be a winner, or should they have left this series alone? Sound off in the comments section.
[Image via Sylvester Stallone Twitter page]
