Anthony Ippolito is stepping into the shoes of a young Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky, the film about the making of the original Rocky that is scheduled for release this November. The project tells the story of how a struggling, unknown Stallone wrote the script for the 1976 boxing classic and fought to star in it himself.
The casting puts Ippolito, a rising young actor, at the centre of one of Hollywood’s most famous origin stories. Stallone was 29 when he wrote Rocky in three days, reportedly inspired by a 1975 fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner, and then refused to sell the script unless he could play the lead.
The Rocky story, retold
The original Rocky won the Academy Award for Best Picture and made Stallone a star overnight, launching a franchise that has now spanned five decades. I Play Rocky dramatises the period before that success — the rejection, the poverty and the gamble of turning down a large payday for the script in order to keep the role.
The film arrives in the same month that Stallone himself has been reflecting publicly on his career, including his decades-long rivalry with Arnold Schwarzenegger, which he discussed on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast this week. That rivalry began at the 1977 Golden Globes, where Stallone won Best Actor for Rocky.
A crowded November for biopics
I Play Rocky is one of several November releases built around real-life stories. The month’s slate also includes the Muhammad Ali series The Greatest on Prime Video, the Terrell Owens documentary Terrell & T.O., and Ebenezer, with Johnny Depp as Charles Dickens’ Scrooge.
For Ippolito, the role is the biggest of his career so far — and one of the hardest in Hollywood: playing a living legend at the moment that made him. If the film captures even a fraction of the original’s underdog spirit, it will find an audience.
Sources: WhoRepresents box-office round-up Nov 2 (I Play Rocky scheduled for November release, Ippolito as young Stallone); TechBriefly Nov 3 (I Play Rocky among November releases); Stallone feud coverage (context on Rocky’s origins).
