Creed 2 gets a new director with Steven Caple Jr. replacing Sylvester Stallone

According to Variety, The Land director Steven Caple Jr. has stepped in to direct Creed 2, with original Creed director Ryan Coogler stepping back to an executive producer role as he wraps up Black Panther. Back in October, Sylvester Stallone—who appeared in the previous movie and co-wrote the sequel’s script—claimed that he was going to direct Creed 2, but Variety says that he decided not to take the job after “talking it over” with star Michael B. Jordan and the executives at Warner Bros. and MGM. Caple was then “personally picked” by Stallone and Jordan after a “lengthy search.”

Jordan seems excited about the news, having shared a message about Caple on Twitter today:

The Variety story doesn’t mention the recent allegations against Sylvester Stallone, who has been accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl and threatening to “beat her head in” if she told anyone, so it’s impossible to say whether or not that impacted the decision to move him off of the project. Stallone, for the record, has said the accusations are “categorically false.”