“Do you believe in me, or not?” asks an unknown actor in the I Play Rocky trailer. The actor is Sylvester Stallone, who use the stage name Mike, and he’s played by rising newcomer Anthony Ippolito, looking and sounding uncannily like the real Sly Stallone.
I Play Rocky isn’t a jokey, campy biopic like the recent (and great) “Weird” Al Yankovic comedy Weird. It’s a very sincere look at the making of 1976’s Rocky, with serious credentials. It marks director Peter Farrelly’s followup to the Best Picture winner Green Book, and is written by Peter Gamble.
And while Farrelly obviously knows comedy — and the trailer has funny moments — I Play Rocky is the essentially true story of how Stallone wrote his own script for Rocky, insisted that he get to play the lead role, and in so doing wrote his own ticket. He became one of the breakout, blockbuster stars of the ’70s and ’80s, and is still thriving today.
Rocky was a huge success as well, earning Rocky 10 Academy Awards nominations and winning three, including Best Picture. (It beat other classics including All the President’s Men.) It spawned five sequels as well as the three Creed films.
Is Sylvester Stallone Involved in I Play Rocky?
Whether Stallone is involved in I Play Rocky appears to be in dispute. In an interview with The Playlist‘s Bingeworthy podcast last year, he said he was blindsided by the project.
“I was shocked to read [about] it… I have zero to do with it,” he said.
But Farrelly later told The Playlist that Stallone had approved.
“The first thing we did was reach out [to Stallone],” Farrelly said. “First of all, that was another script that a guy named Peter Gamble wrote. And it came to me, and I was like, ‘incredible script!’ So they said, ‘Do you wanna make it?’ I said, ‘If Sly’s okay with it.’ And so they sent it to Stallone. He read it. And then I met with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA. I said, ‘Hey, what do you think? I’m not gonna make it if you don’t give me the thumbs up.’
“And he goes, ‘Great. Do it.’ So we did it. But I guess along the way, he must have forgotten. The only misunderstanding I can imagine is that he was working on his memoirs. And I guess he was working on it while we were making the movie. And once we were done, I heard that. And by the way, he’s gonna be very, very happy because it’s a great story and he comes across fantastically.”
MovieMaker has reached out to Stallone’s rep for clarification and will update this post if they reply.
Even President Trump has recounted the Rocky origin story. Stallone is one of Trump’s “ambassadors to Hollywood,” and in a lengthy address last August, the president said Stallone was offered $1 million to let a different actor play Rocky, and he kept saying no.
“He said ‘it can’t be successful if you’re going to pick a movie actor with a bad build — a nice face but a bad body,’” Trump explained. “He knew what a boxer’s body was. So they brought him one [actor] and I won’t tell you who it was, but it was a big name. But the chest wasn’t exactly what you need. One shot and your heart would pop out. That wasn’t too good.
“Then he did another [actor] who was fat, sloppy — but had a good face. Then he did another one and another one and another one, and he turned it down. He wouldn’t take $1 million. He wouldn’t do it. Then when they saw him, they said, ‘you know, you’d be actually pretty good for this role.”
The I Play Rocky cast also includes AnnaSophia Robb, Matt Dillon and Toby Kebbell. Jay Duplass plays Rocky director Jon Avildsen.
I Play Rocky arrives in theaters November 6 from Amazon MGM Studios.
Main image: Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky. Amazon MGM Studios.
Editor’s note: Updates with comment from Farrelly, Stallone and Trump.