‘Creed’ Is Getting a ‘Drago’ Spinoff Film

I must break it to you: Drago from the Rocky and Creed franchise is getting his own spinoff.

Rumors of such a project have emerged in recent years, after Ivan Drago, played by Dolph Lundgren, made a well-received return in 2018’s Creed II. Now there are reports that the project is moving forward with a new writer assigned to write the screenplay.

According to TheWrap, Robert Lawton has been hired to write a Drago movie. Interestingly, Lawton recently wrote a spec script called Becoming Rocky, a biopic about the young Sylvester Stallone and his attempts to make the original Rocky movie. The script apparently impressed the executives at MGM enough that they gave him the assignment to write this spinoff.

They don‘t have any details about the plot, but in Creed II an older Ivan Drago appears as the trainer of his son Viktor, played by Florian Munteanu. The elder Drago killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo, in what was supposed to be a friendly exhibition match in Rocky IV. So their sons faced off in the sequel as a means of the younger Creed avenging his father’s death.

While Rocky IV depicted Ivan Drago as a simplistic killing machine, Creed II showed a more human side of the character, who lost all of his status in Russia after his loss to Rocky and who dearly loves his son, even though he pushes him through extreme training to ensure he will be the best fighter possible. Presumably a sequel — if it is a sequel and not some kind of prequel about a young Drago — would continue that father-son dynamic, and the reconsideration of Drago as a more complex guy.

In the meantime, the Drago-less Creed III is scheduled to open in theaters on November 23, 2022. Creed’s new opponent in that film will be played by Jonathan Majors.