Rocky Franchise Gets New Streaming Home

One of the most beloved film franchises of all time is headed to Max, as the six Rocky movies arrived on the streamer today. Rocky’s spinoff series, Creed, didn’t make the move along with the Italian Stallion, but Stallone’s decades-long epic is there in its entirety, featuring Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V, and the legacy sequel Rocky Balboa, which picked up with the character in 2006 after the death of his beloved wife Adrian. At this point, it is all but guaranteed Balboa will be the final installment in the franchise.

Not only is Stallone too old to realistically get back into the ring as Rocky, but the character is likely retired barring some miracle, due to rights disputes between Stallone and producer Irwin Winkler. For years, Stallone used to tell stories about how Winkler was the only man in Hollywood willing to buy the Rocky script, if it meant accepting Stallone as the movie’s lead (a condition the writer/actor placed on the sale). More recently, he has expressed frustration with the fact that Winkler and MGM own Rocky in its entirety, leaving no piece of the rights to his most acclaimed work for Stallone. 

He has also expressed what some see as frustration with the direction of the franchise, as Winkler and Michael B. Jordan decided to leave Rocky out of Creed III and go in another direction. Creed has more movies, comics, and animation in the works, and seems to be viewed by Winkler and MGM as one of their most viable franchises, right alongside things like James Bond.

Rocky, released and set in 1976, told the story of a small-time boxer who was given the chance to fight the heavyweight champion of the world in a gimmick match to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial. Set in Philadelphia’s poor Italian neighborhoods of the time, Rocky Balboa represented an underdog as well as any character of his era. The movie itself received ten Academy Award nominations and won three, including Best Picture, and is widely regarded as one of the best movies ever made. Its financial success would lead to the aforementioned sequels, and the omnipresence of that franchise would contribute to the creation of the Creed spinoff after writers Aaron Covington and Ryan Coogler decided to revisit the world of Rocky — a world they grew up watching with their fathers on VHS.