I Play Rocky Retells Stallone's Fight to Get Rocky Made

A broke young actor in New York City in 1974 refuses to sell the boxing script he believes will make him a star.

That actor is Sylvester Stallone, and his fight to get Rocky made is the subject of I Play Rocky, a new film from director Peter Farrelly about the making of the 1976 boxing classic, according to Variety.

Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone. The script was written by Peter Gamble. AnnaSophia Robb plays Sasha, and Matt Dillon plays Frank Stallone, Stallone’s brother.

The story starts in 1974 in New York. Stallone is out of money and out of options. The film reaches back further too, including his appearance in a soft-core porn film in 1970, a job taken years before fame.

He will not sell. Producers want the script but not the writer. Stallone wants to play Rocky Balboa himself.

I Play Rocky is made by Amazon MGM, which showed a first look at the film at CinemaCon in April, according to Variety. At that event Farrelly described it as a movie for anyone who has been naive and crazy enough to make their dream a reality, according to Variety.

To play Stallone, Ippolito spent upwards of a year on the physical transformation, according to Variety. That meant building the look, voice and movement of a young Stallone before filming began.

The film has now premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, known as TIFF. It will open in a limited release, meaning in a small number of theatres first, before opening nationwide in theatres on 20 Nov 2026, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The timing links directly to history. November 2026 will mark 50 years since Rocky was released.

For fans, this means a familiar story told from the other side of the camera. Not the bout in the ring, but the longer bout to get the film made at all.