Michael B. Jordan's $660 Million Action Franchise Is Dominating Its Free Streaming Home
TL;DR: The Creed films, starring and often directed by Michael B. Jordan, are pulling in massive viewership on Tubi years after their theatrical release, hitting over $660 million globally. This isn't just a nostalgic bump; it's a testament to Jordan's star power and the franchise's enduring appeal, creating new buzz for a series that keeps surprising everyone. You can find out exactly where to stream them right now.
Michael B. Jordan’s Creed trilogy isn't just a box office champion with over $660 million worldwide; it’s now a free streaming powerhouse. Think about that for a second. Years after hitting cinemas, these movies are still drawing huge audiences on Tubi, where Creed II currently ranks No. 2 in the United States, with Creed III right behind it at fourth. That’s two films from the same franchise in the top five on a free, ad-supported platform. What does this tell us about Jordan, the series' staying power, and its future? Quite a lot, actually.
Tubi's Surprise Hit: The Creed Films' Current Reign
The numbers don't lie. According to streaming performance data cited by Collider, Creed II has been holding the number-two spot among Tubi's most-watched titles in the United States this week. Simultaneously, Creed III ranks fourth. That’s genuinely wild — two films from one franchise, both in the top five, on a free streaming service boasting over 80 million registered users. It’s a clear example of how staggered release windows and free availability can bring a catalogue roaring back to life.
Here's the quick breakdown of where the franchise stands today, and how it grew with each installment:
- Creed (2015): Pulled in $173 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. Ryan Coogler directed this one, and Sylvester Stallone even nabbed an Oscar nomination for his Rocky Balboa.
- Creed II (2018): Followed up with $214 million worldwide from a $50 million budget. Steven Caple Jr. directed, and critics still give it an 83% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
- Creed III (2023): Jordan’s directorial debut, earning $276.1 million worldwide on a $75 million budget. It scored an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, with audiences rating it even higher at 95%.
Total: north of $660 million combined. Honestly, for a long-shot spinoff, this franchise has now outperformed the back half of the original Rocky series. And it's still pulling viewers on Tubi's free-with-ads tier years later — a testament to its rewatchability. If you’re tracking what’s hot on free streaming, Movie OTT's daily chart for Tubi offers a real-time look at top performers.
The Unlikely Box Office Growth of a Spinoff
What's striking is how each film in this series managed to grow—not just financially, but critically. That doesn't happen often in Hollywood. Sequels typically lose steam; franchises bloat. The Creed trilogy ran against that grain almost entirely, with each installment building on the last.
Creed III, in particular, landed with unusual force. As confirmed by the Motion Picture Association's reporting on the film's opening weekend, the film opened to $58.7 million domestically — a franchise record — and became the first sports film in history to surpass $100 million globally in its debut weekend. Jordan directed that film. His first time behind the camera. On a $75 million budget, against a marketplace still recovering from post-pandemic volatility.
The sports drama genre doesn't produce numbers like that easily. Films like Hustle (2022) and Air (2023) earned critical respect but couldn't match that kind of theatrical pull. Creed III did it with a stripped-down premise—a former champion facing a ghost from his past—that leaned hard into psychological tension rather than spectacle. The climactic fight sequence between Adonis Creed and Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) takes place in an arena that literally empties out, the crowd disappearing, leaving only the two men and their shared history. It's one of the more formally ambitious sequences in recent sports cinema. Even if you've seen them before, these are built for rewatching. Movie OTT also tracks where all three films are available right now, if you're not on Tubi.
Beyond the Ring: Jordan's Journey to Stardom
Michael B. Jordan has never been content to stand still. The Newark-born actor spent years building toward a breakthrough that most Hollywood observers expected to come from a superhero role—and it did, sort of, when he played Erik Killmonger in Black Panther (2018). But the franchise that truly defined his star power wasn't Marvel's. It was a scrappy Rocky spinoff that nobody was sure the world needed, built around a grieving son trying to earn a name that wasn't given to him.
Jordan has been candid about the weight of directing Creed III while also starring in it. In interviews surrounding the film's 2023 release, he described the dual role as something he'd been preparing for across his entire career—not just technically, but emotionally. "I've been studying this for a long time," Jordan told reporters, explaining that his collaboration with Ryan Coogler had given him a masterclass in how a director builds trust with actors on set. He spoke about wanting to honor the franchise's legacy while also pushing it somewhere new—specifically, into territory that explored Black masculinity, brotherhood, and the silence between men who've hurt each other without ever saying so out loud. That thematic ambition probably explains why the film holds a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
(Disclosure: Movie OTT reached out to MGM for comment on the franchise's streaming performance; no response was received by publication time.)
The Team Behind the Triumph: Coogler, Cast, and the Director's Chair
The Creed franchise didn't come from nowhere. Ryan Coogler—then a 29-year-old director fresh off Fruitvale Station—pitched the concept to MGM and Warner Bros. as a full-fledged drama, not a nostalgia cash-grab. That framing mattered. It's why Stallone's Rocky in the first film feels like a character study rather than a cameo.
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