So far, Creed III has received solid critical reception, set domestic box office records, and put up an impressive global box office. But some of its international showings in Europe have been disrupted by giant brawls. And that’s led to some theaters pulling the movie, as Deadline’s Melanie Goodfellow wrote Wednesday morning:
‘Creed III’ Screenings Disrupted In France & Germany After Isolated Brawls Break Out https://t.co/hp6EcmTFpR
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) March 8, 2023
As per that piece from Goodfellow, French media reported more than a dozen separate disturbances in that country at Creed III screenings this weekend. And fighting also broke out in Germany at screenings in Hamburg, Essen, and Bremen. Here are some more details on some of those fights:
Police were called to an afternoon screening in a Mégarama cinema in the central French city of Saint Etienne on Saturday (March 4) after fighting broke out and a security guard suffered a head injury when cans and bottles started to fly.
Later that day, the police forced 500 people to evacuate from a Kinepolis cinema in the northeastern French town of Thionville after a mass brawl broke out, leading to the cancellation of the screening. Footage of the disturbance went viral.
That’s led to some cinemas in both France and Germany pulling future screenings of the film. And while that aforementioned box office performance is already impressive, there may be some leeriness from theaters if incidents like this keep happening. Just because it’s an impressive boxing movie, and one showing off the talents of Jonathan Majors as well as Michael B. Jordan (seen at left and right above in a still from the film), that doesn’t mean audiences should decide to do their own boxing around it.
[Deadline; photo from MGM]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.