Sylvester Stallone wanted a classic Queen song for Rocky's third, but luckily for everyone they couldn't reach an agreement.
The soundtrack is important for each of the films, and even series, and the choice of the theme is usually not easy, basically due to copyright.
That is why most film productions opt for making their own soundtrack, to ensure these exclusive rights forever.
However, from time to time, some films are also made with certain rights to popular songs to boost the box office, and that was initially going to be done with Rocky 3.
However, if you remember Rocky 3 The theme from Eye of The Tiger by the musical group Survivor will sound familiar to you, and it suited it perfectly. In fact we hear it in some iconic scenes of Rocky Balboa training to face Clubber Lang, played by Mr T.
However, Rocky 3 was a success as it raised $270 million, and the song Eye Of The Tiger was able to reach the top positions on Billboard.
But the producers of Rocky 3, including Sylvester Stallone himself, wanted Queen's classic song Another One Bites the Dust to be the theme song for the film.
However, they were unable to reach an agreement with the rights to the song and it was ultimately not included in Rocky 3, but Sylvester Stallone I had an idea.
So, faced with the refusal to include Another One Bites the Dust in Rocky 3, Stallone met with the musical group Survivor to create an exclusive song for the film.
According to The Guardian, in a previous interview, Survivor guitarist and songwriter, Jim Peterikexplained that it was quite easy to reach an agreement to produce a theme song for Rocky 3.
Basically it explains that at that time Survivor had released two albums that had not performed too well in the market, and they thought that being able to create the main theme of an already established license like Rocky could give them a boost, which it did.
So after reading an initial draft of Rocky 3, the musical group Survivor was able to create Eye of the Tiger, which suited the film perfectly to achieve that box office success.