The “pathetic” movie producer Sylvester Stallone called “remarkably untalented and parasitical”
He may be turning 80 years old next year, but honestly, you still wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of Sylvester Stallone.
Aside from the fact that he keeps himself in ridiculously good shape, he knows his way around a boxing ring or two, and even if you did manage to get the first punch in, he would probably just call the rest of the Expendables up and then you’d be in real trouble.
That’s probably not something he’d need to do if it came down to brass tacks with the most recent subject of his ire, however, given the chap he called out on social media a couple of years back is now 94.
The fallout happened with Stallone’s former producing partner Irwin Winkler and his son David in a row over the rights to the action star’s classic pugilist franchise Rocky, and the spin-off Creed movies that followed. The feud goes back many years after Stallone, who originally worked with the elder Winkler without issue on the first movie in 1976, was forced to sell the rights to Rocky while struggling for money and before it became a hit, an issue that he says, “Eats at his soul”.
Winkler duly purchased them and has therefore had control over which movies get made and which don’t ever since, which upsets Stallone, who would have liked to have made many more of them, despite there already having been six Rocky movies and three Creed films, the last of which was released in 2023.
Stallone, who is fond of an Instagram rant or two, called David Winkler, who served as a producer on 2006’s Rocky Balboa and Creed III, “painfully untalented” while deriding his Dad Irwin as “remarkably untalented and parasitical”, before deleting the post.
The issue was raised due to the long-in-development Rocky spin-off Drago starring Stallone’s old foe Dolph Lundgren, which MGM have wanted to make for some time. Stallone would have given the green light some time ago, but due to not having the rights, he has been unable to get the project moving.
He wrote: “If it wasn’t for Winkler there would’ve been at least another three ‘Rocky’’s, that would’ve been wonderful. After IRWIN controlling ‘ROCKY’ for over 47 years, and now ‘CREED,’ I really would like (to) have at least a little WHAT’s LEFT of my RIGHTS back.”
It’s unlikely Winkler senior was too perturbed by any of it, given the success he has had in Hollywood since the 1960s. Not only did he jointly pick up the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’ for the first Rocky, but another two nominations for Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull and astronaut drama The Right Stuff in 1983.
Meanwhile, there are currently no updates as to when Drago might hit screens, or Rocky 7 for that matter, although there are plenty of fan-made trailers for both films knocking around. But Stallone isn’t going to be sitting idle, far from it. He has no less than eight different films in different stages of production in his capacity as an actor and director.
One of those includes Tough as They Come, starring Adam Driver and directed by Stallone, about a soldier returning from Afghanistan who loses all his limbs and has to adjust to life back home, and a revenge movie called The Epiphany starring Sly.
