Rocky Balboa is (kind of) returning to the big screen.
Amazon MGM has revealed the first look at “The Offer” actor Anthony Ippolito as a young Sylvester Stallone in “I Play Rocky,” a true story about the tumultuous making of the 1976 boxing classic “Rocky.”
“The film tells the true story of Sylvester Stallone and his unshakable belief that he wasn’t just meant to write Rocky, he was meant to be Rocky Balboa,” reads the caption on Instagram.
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Long before he became an onscreen action hero, a 29-year-old Stallone was a struggling actor with a partially paralyzed face and a speech impediment. He wrote the script to “Rocky” but refused to sell the rights unless he got to play the lead. After turning down six-figure deals, he got the movie made for under $1 million. An ultimate underdog story, “Rocky” became that year’s biggest box office hit and eventual Oscar best picture winner. After cementing its place in Hollywood history, the original “Rocky” spawned several sequels as well as the “Creed” spinoff series.
“Green Book” filmmaker Peter Farrelly is directing “I Play Rocky,” which is currently in production. Ippolito will star alongside Stephan James as Carl Weathers, who portrayed Rocky’s fierce rival Apollo Creed, as well as AnnaSophia Robb, Matt Dillon, P.J. Byrne, Tracy Letts and Jay Duplass.
“I Play Rocky” will be produced by Farrelly, former Warner Bros. film chief Toby Emmerich and Christian Baha. Peter Gamble (“Office Uprising”) is writing the screenplay.
When the film was announced in 2024, Baha described the story of “I Play Rocky” as “unique as Sylvester Stallone himself, a seeming Everyman with an undeniable gift who needs to share it with the world and refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer.”
From Variety US