Michael B. Jordan after the Oscars: Is anime the new ring after Creed?

While Hollywood is still struggling to refresh old franchises, Michael B. Jordan has chosen a path that has surprised even film analysts. In a Vogue cover interview, the actor, now approaching 40, admitted that he is developing not just one but several anime projects in the early stages. The man who once brought the spirit of Dragon Ball Z into the sports film Creed III no longer hides his ambition to become a recognized animation producer. The punch he once threw in the ring may soon be replaced by energy blasts on the animated screen. I write about sports. I grew up in bars where people argued about football until they lost their voices. But when I look at Michael B. Jordan, I see a true athlete in the entertainment industry. He does not run on a football pitch, and he does not score goals, but he understands something many stars do not: fame is only the beginning, strategy is what helps a person stay relevant for a long time. A young player can shine for one season and then disappear. An actor can win an Oscar and then become invisible if he does not know how to use it. Jordan first became widely known for playing Adonis Creed in the Rocky and Creed series. In 2026, he took the director's chair with Creed III, a film he admitted was directly influenced by anime. The camera angles, the rhythm of the fights and the action choreography all carried signals familiar to Dragon Ball Z fans. Soon after, Jordan teamed up with Coach for a fashion campaign and worked with TMS Entertainment on an animated short called Swapped. He also lent his voice to a project connected to Netflix. During this period, Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Jordan, received 16 Academy Award nominations and won four awards. The label of an Oscar-winning actor is no longer just an advertising line. It has become a launching pad for every new ambition. Jordan is also preparing to star in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair alongside Adria Arjona, directed by Kenneth Branagh. He has a Miami Vice project with Austin Butler, along with a project called Delphi. And of course, Sinners has just given him the Oscar glow. The core point here is not that a Hollywood star likes anime. Michael B. Jordan is turning a childhood hobby into a multi-layered content production model, in which he is simultaneously the brand, the fundraiser and the creative decision-maker. From the outside, it looks like a long list of projects. Look closer, and you will see a chessboard where every piece serves a larger goal: to move Jordan into the position of a producer with real power, not just a familiar face on a movie poster. Creed III is the clearest proof. The debut directing job was not safe. A boxing film without Rocky Balboa was a gamble. Jordan accepted that gamble and brought into it what he had loved since childhood. He did not just direct a fight; he staged a battle in the language of anime. Jonathan Majors' character moved with a supernatural quality, and Adonis Creed reacted like a warrior from another world. For those who grew up with Dragon Ball Z, that scene was deeply familiar. For general audiences, it was simply a spectacular match. That is Jordan's rare skill. He knows how to bring material with a strong fan culture into a product that can still sell tickets to the mainstream. Many anime adaptations failed because creators were too reverent toward the source material and forgot how to tell a story for a wider audience. At the other extreme, some filmmakers tried to reinvent everything and lost the soul of the original. Jordan is walking between those two poles. He does not tell audiences they are watching anime. He takes the spirit of anime, blends it into the muscle, the eyes and the rhythm of the actors, and lets the audience feel it. The Vogue interview should not be read as a product announcement. It is a strategic message. Jordan wants studios, investors and audiences to understand that he is entering animation with a hybrid foundation. He is not purely an animation director. He is a movie star who can open the box office, a director with experience in action staging, a producer who understands popular culture, and a real anime fan who understands why audiences love these characters. Those four layers of experience form a competitive advantage that is very hard to copy. The collaboration with TMS Entertainment on Swapped also follows that logic. This is not yet a theatrical anime film, but it allows Jordan to work with a major Japanese animation company, learn how an animation project is run, and create a short product to test the market. In football, this is called a friendly before the big tournament. In film, it is a way to reduce risk before spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a feature-length anime. Jordan is not immediately burning money on an anime project. He is building relationships, gathering audience feedback data, and only then thinking about expansion. This patience is the opposite of how many Hollywood stars handle passion projects. They hear a tempting pitch, sign quickly, and hope everything will work out. Jordan has gone through a different process. He spent years talking about anime in interviews, embedding anime material into his films, and only when audiences started associating his name with anime did he officially announce his development projects. That approach is not new, but few people are willing to stay patient for so long. Thinking about the Oscar moment, I remember what it felt like watching an underdog team win a championship after years of waiting. Sinners received 16 nominations and won four Oscars, a historic result for Ryan Coogler and Jordan. But that victory, if not used at the right time, will quickly become the past. Jordan is using it as a credibility certificate. When a producer sits at the negotiation table with a Japanese animation studio, being able to say I just won an Oscar with a film directed by Ryan Coogler changes how partners see him. It proves that he is not just a fan with money. He is someone who can take a project from the page to the big screen and earn the recognition of critics. From the perspective of someone who has followed sports for years, I see in Jordan a similarity to the way coaches build a squad. A great player can score many goals, but a team is only strong when it knows how to rotate players and use the right person at the right time. Jordan is rotating his career. Right now, he is a movie star enjoying the Oscar spotlight. In a year, he hopes to be mentioned as an anime producer. That is a long transition. If he pours all his energy into anime right now, his other film projects may suffer. If he keeps chasing blockbusters, he will miss the golden window for building an animation infrastructure. That is why his project list is arranged so smartly. The Thomas Crown Affair is a seductive crime film that strengthens his image as a star leading a major Hollywood franchise. Miami Vice with Austin Butler is a project with strong style and music, fitting what he is building with Coach. Delphi is an unknown, but the name alone makes people curious. Sinners has already cemented his position across both artistic and commercial cinema. Meanwhile, his anime projects are further in the future, where he can focus resources without being distracted too early. Looking at that timeline, Jordan is operating like a professional sports club. He has a starting lineup of commercial film projects that guarantee revenue and media coverage. He has young players in the anime projects still in development. He has a youth academy built on relationships with TMS Entertainment, Netflix and Japanese production houses. He has a physiotherapist in the Oscar that heals his reputation after doubts. Everything is arranged according to a rhythm. That rhythm matters more than any single project. I once sat in a bar and argued with friends about matches everyone thought were certain. There is a phrase I still use with myself: the bar taught me how to read a game, while the lineup only distracts me. The list of names in a film is similar. Looking at The Thomas Crown Affair, people see Adria Arjona and Kenneth Branagh. Looking at Miami Vice, they see Austin Butler. But the deciding factor is not the starry cast. It is in the adaptation, in the script, in how to keep the breath of the original while blowing fresh air into it. Jordan will have to prove that he can do that with franchises tied to legendary films. In football, I learned that a team defending with many men in their own half is often treated with contempt. People call it negative football, the enemy of entertainment. Morocco at the 2026 World Cup was called boring. But when that team reached the semi-finals, experts had to rewrite their criticism. In the same way, Jordan's anime projects may be dismissed as media stunts. People might say he is only using the anime trend to refresh his image. If those projects fail, the criticism will be even harsher. But if they succeed, history will write that he dared to bet on a field many Hollywood stars would not enter. The stadium is empty, but I have never been without an audience. I used that phrase to talk about the pandemic days when football stopped. But it also applies to the current anime market. Theaters are reopening, and anime fans are growing in number, but most Hollywood studios still fear the risk of adaptation. They fear fan backlash, production costs, and the difficulty of finding people who understand the source material. Jordan is filling that gap. He may fail, but he is placing himself in a market with little competition. When everyone is afraid, the brave one has more room to experiment. Of course, courage is not certainty. In this part, I have to look at where I could be wrong. First, an anime project in early development means almost nothing. Hollywood has hundreds of projects announced and then quietly canceled. Jordan can talk about his love of anime, but until an animated film gets the green light and a concrete production schedule, everything is only a promise. Swapped is a short animation, not a blockbuster. It is good for brand building, but it does not prove that Jordan can serve as an executive producer on a feature-length animation. Second, love for a work does not automatically create the ability to tell stories. There are many people who love Dragon Ball Z so much that they can recall every scene, but not all of them can build a film with emotional depth. Jordan made a good boxing fight in Creed III, but anime is not only about fighting. Great anime also includes worldview, the loneliness of a character, the silence between battles. Does Jordan understand that part? That is a question with no answer yet. Third, remakes like The Thomas Crown Affair and Miami Vice carry pressure from the past. Audiences who loved the originals will be extremely demanding. They will compare Jordan to the actors who came before him, compare every look, every line, every piece of fashion. If Jordan fails in one of those two projects, it will seriously affect his credibility as a producer. Renewing a film that already has a place in the hearts of audiences is much harder than creating a new brand from scratch. Fourth, there is the problem of workload management. In sports, people romanticize the heavy schedules of players. Clubs let stars compete in three competitions at the same time, then wake up disappointed when the player gets injured. Jordan is facing a similar threat in his career path. He acts, produces, directs, represents a fashion brand, and develops anime. Human energy is limited. No matter how talented he is, if he stretches too wide, quality will be eroded. He needs a truly good management team to share the burden; otherwise, the long list of projects will become a burden. The last thing I could be wrong about is the way I read market signals. It is possible that announcing anime projects in the Vogue interview is not a well-planned strategy, but just a casual conversation between a star and a journalist. It is possible that Jordan has never thought about arranging projects like a chess game. It is possible that all of this is just random pieces falling into place because of the Oscar glow. But whether accidental or intentional, the market's reaction to this story shows something clearly: audiences are hungry for anime stories told with the sincerity of someone who truly loves them, not through the commercial formula of an entertainment corporation. The contrarian angle of this story is that Jordan chose to announce these things when he had just left the Oscar stage. If Sinners had not won, would his anime story have received attention? Perhaps it would still have received some attention, but the level would be very different. The Oscar creates a wave of goodwill. It makes articles about Jordan more positive, helps him attract resources more easily, and makes collaboration offers come faster. Football is the same. A big win against a strong opponent can change the whole mentality of a team for the next stage. Jordan is using this golden moment to lay the first bricks of an animation empire. Some people might ask: why does a successful actor of color choose anime, a field Hollywood usually associates with Japanese culture? That is the wrong question. Pop culture does not belong to any single community. Dragon Ball Z was created by Akira Toriyama, but it has become part of the childhood memory of millions of people around the world, including children who grew up in poor neighborhoods of America, in rural villages of Vietnam, or in modern cities of Japan. Jordan sees that. He does not come to anime to follow a trend. He comes to anime because it speaks to him in a language that needs no translation. I remember the first time I watched a match where I was sure the result would go against the crowd. When the goal arrived, before the people around me could say anything, the only words I repeated in my head were: the beer was not drunk, the bet was not placed, but I had already seen South Korea beat Germany. That was the moment I learned that a different opinion only has value when it is proven by results. The same is happening with Jordan. He talks about anime, he talks about brand building, he talks about growth after Creed III. But all of it only has value when those projects actually debut and are embraced by audiences. Until then, I can only say that Jordan is doing something interesting. He is using his influential voice to open a door for a genre that many major studios are still cautious about. He is creating a model that other young stars can learn from: refusing to settle for being only an actor, not being afraid to be labeled an enthusiastic fan, and always thinking about a career as one long-term whole. In football, we call that tactical thinking. In Hollywood, it is called producer vision. The most interesting question is not whether Jordan will win or lose with his anime projects. The most interesting question is whether a star can move beyond his own name to become a new identity. If he succeeds, Jordan will no longer be just Adonis Creed in the eyes of audiences. He will be the first person to bring anime into the center of Hollywood in a smart and sustainable way. If he fails, the story will become a classic lesson about the abuse of fame. Both endings are worth watching. Sitting in a bar, I learned that the moments when a team is pushed into a weak position are often the times they create the most innovative things. Jordan is entering a new land. He is not young, but he is not old. He has the Oscar glow, a big project list, a strong network of partners, and a close relationship with Ryan Coogler. That energy needs to be used at the right time. If he hesitates, other giants will occupy the anime market. If he rushes too quickly, he may fall halfway. There is another phrase I often use when writing about players: dirty defending or smart defending, the score will answer. Here it is the same. Passion or publicity stunt, the work will answer. Our job is to watch a star grow in the process of proving himself. Our job is not to rush to label him just because he is different. And our job is to remember that in Hollywood, as on the pitch, every plan can collapse in one night. Jordan knows that better than anyone. So, let us wait. In one, two or three years, we will know who was right. If Jordan's anime projects debut and succeed, I will write another article to admit that I saw it coming. If he fails, I will also write another article, not to mock him, but to understand why a seemingly perfect plan could not stand. For someone who does sports commentary, that is the only way to stay honest with readers. Today, Michael B. Jordan is standing at the biggest crossroads of his career. Not the crossroads between success and failure, but the crossroads between being a star and becoming a creator who can shape the next generation. Victor Wembanyama came to the NBA with the promise of changing the way basketball is played. Jordan comes to Hollywood with the promise of changing the way stories are told through animation. Such promises are always doubted until they are made real. I will follow this story. Not because I am an anime fan. I follow it because I love sports, and I know that the peak of sports is not in individual victories but in the ability to sustain excellence across many seasons. Jordan is entering the longest season of his life. On that field, the opponent is not a boxer or a team. The opponent is public fatigue, doubt, complicated contracts, and the gap between words and action. As a final line, I would say this to him: A star can win an Oscar, but anime does not give awards to promises. Go prove it, Michael B. Jordan.