I PLAY ROCKY: First Look at Anthony Ippolito as a Young Sylvester Stallone in the Making of a Hollywood Legend
Amazon MGM has shared the first look at I Play Rocky, the upcoming film that dives into the incredible true story behind the making of Rocky.
The movie stars Anthony Ippolito (The Offer) as a young Sylvester Stallone, and it’s looking to capture the grit, desperation, and determination that launched one of cinema’s greatest underdog stories.
According to the studio, “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.”
Before he was an action icon, Stallone was just a struggling actor in his twenties trying to break through in Hollywood. With a partially paralyzed face and a speech impediment, he was constantly told he’d never make it.
But he wrote the script for Rocky and refused to sell it unless he could play the lead himself. Despite turning down lucrative six-figure offers, he stuck to his vision.
The movie was eventually made for under $1 million, and went on to become the biggest box office hit of 1976 and win the Oscar for Best Picture. What began as one man’s fight for a chance became a franchise that inspired generations and spawned the Creed spinoffs decades later.
I Play Rocky is being directed by Peter Farrelly, the filmmaker behind Green Book, and is currently in production. Alongside Ippolito, the cast includes Stephan James as Carl Weathers, who originally brought Rocky’s rival Apollo Creed to life, as well as AnnaSophia Robb, Matt Dillon, P.J. Byrne, Tracy Letts, and Jay Duplass.
Farrelly is also producing the film alongside Toby Emmerich and Christian Baha, with Peter Gamble (Office Uprising) writing the screenplay.
When the project was first announced in 2024, Baha described 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.”
I Play Rocky promises to remind audiences why the Italian Stallion’s story still punches just as hard today as it did nearly fifty years ago.