As well as being lauded by fans as the most unabashedly cheesy and purely entertaining installment in the franchise, Rocky IV is also the Italian Stallion’s highest-grossing outing after earning $300 million at the box office back in 1985. Not only that, but 36 years later it still remains the third most commercially successful sports movie in history, behind only Indian wrestling drama Dangal and Sandra Bullock’s The Blind Side.
You never know, but looking at how the release calendar for the rest of the year continues to thin out as the Delta variant surges, it can’t be completely discounted that Rocky IV may yet end up reclaiming the top spot when the Director’s Cut comes to theaters on November 11th.
Stallone has been working on the revised edition of Rocky’s battle against Ivan Drago since last year, but in a new social media video that you can see below, the 75 year-old action icon confirmed that the finishing touches are being applied, and it’s almost ready to go.
It’s nice to see Stallone take a literal trip down memory lane, driving past the apartment he lived in when he wrote Rocky in a furious bout of creative inspiration back in the mid-1970s, and nostalgia alone should guarantee that audiences will be keen to check out the Director’s Cut of Rocky IV on the big screen.
A home video release hasn’t been announced yet, but you’d imagine an announcement will come shortly after the theatrical rollout. It’ll be a must-have for Rocky completionists, and should help soften the blow that the iconic character isn’t going to be a part of Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut Creed III.