Watch: Rocky Returns In The First Trailer For ‘Creed’ Starring Michael B. Jordan And Sylvester Stallone

When a talented young filmmaker breaks out with a big indie film, they often have two choices: go straight for the gold or cultivate a career through smaller, careful steps. The former route can often be seen as being seduced by the temptations of Hollywood, with its larger budgets, bigger opportunities and access to some amazing actors and talents. The latter route, is often seen as the road less traveled, but the one that has longevity and integrity to it. These are of course just simplistic constructs of more complex scenarios that are often driven chance or luck, but they are of course narratives that are sometimes hard to shake.

With this in mind, this writer was a little surprised to hear that following his 2012 Sundance hit “Fruitvale Station,” promising filmmaker Ryan Coogler was going to make a quasi kind of “Rocky” sequel for his major studio debut. If anyone seemed like he would be the type of filmmaker to tell his own stories before going the studio route, it was...