Amazon MGM’s film about the making of Rocky – called I Play Rocky – has a first trailer. Anthony Ippolito stars as a young Sly Stallone. Update: A trailer for I Play Rocky has emerged! You can see Anthony Ippolito’s take on Sylvester Stallone, at the stage of his career when he was still trying ... I Play Rocky | First trailer gives us a glimpse of Anthony Ippolito’s Sylvester Stallone impression
Amazon MGM’s film about the making of Rocky – called I Play Rocky – has a first trailer. Anthony Ippolito stars as a young Sly Stallone.
Update: A trailer for I Play Rocky has emerged! You can see Anthony Ippolito’s take on Sylvester Stallone, at the stage of his career when he was still trying to get a chance to play the boxer Rocky Balboa, below. Convincing or a little bit cosplay? We’ll leave it to you to decide.
There isn’t a release date for director Peter Farrelly’s contender yet, but the word is we can expect it in cinemas in November 2026 – just in time for the original Rocky’s 50th annivesary. We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
Previously…
5th January 2026: I Play Rocky, Amazon MGM’s film about Sylvester Stallone’s rise to fame and Oscar-winning boxing movie, could have an apt release date.
Actor Scot Teller, who’s playing Rocky co-star Burt Young in the upcoming film, put up a post on Instagram which read, “See you on The Big Screen November 2026.”
That post was picked up by such outlets as ScreenRant and World Of Reel before Teller took it down – possibly because the studio didn’t want the release window announced this early. Certainly, Amazon MGM hasn’t officially revealed when the biopic’s scheduled to appear, so we’ll have to take Teller’s post with a pinch of salt at this stage. But there’s one thing worth noting about the timing: the original Rocky made its screen debut on the 20th November 1976 in New York before its wider theatrical roll-out the following month.
It’d certainly make sense if I Play Rocky, directed by Peter Farrelly and starring Anthony Ippolito as a young Stallone at the start of his career, had its release on or near Rocky's 50th anniversary.
We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
Our previous story follows…
Update 3rd October 2025: Casting is moving apace for I Play Rocky, director Peter Farrelly’s drama about Sylvester Stallone’s path from 1970s obscurity to Oscar glory. We’ve previously heard that Anthony Ippolito will play the young Stallone, working away on some boxing drama script called Rocky in 70s Manhattan.
Farrelly’s film will also dig into the making of Rocky itself, however, with Deadline reporting that Stephan James, star of If Beale Street Could Talk, has been cast as Carl Weathers. He’s the actor who played the grandstanding boxer Apollo Creed in the 1976 film.
Presumably, we’ll hear who’ll play Rocky director John G Avildsen or Talia Shire, the actor who played Rocky Balboa’s future wife, in due course.
Earlier…
Update 19th September 2025: When I Play Rocky was announced last year, there was the question of how involved its subject, Sylvester Stallone, would be. The film is, after all, a recounting of the screenwriter, actor and director’s pre-fame struggles, and how he went from a Hollywood outsider to Oscar glory with the 1976 boxing drama, Rocky.
In a new interview with The Playlist, however, Stallone suggested that nobody had told him about the project’s existence before it was publicly announced. “I was shocked to read about it,” he said. “I have zero to do with it.”
It’s a slightly odd state of affairs, and means that director Peter Farrelly’s forthcoming drama will be an unauthorised version of Stallone’s history. Anthony Ippolito is set to play the actor in his 30s, struggling to build a career in early 1970s New York. Stallone seems more bemused than irked by the situation, though; he added that being consulted on the film could have allowed him to “participate and give them some insight.”
Nor is Stallone involved in the forthcoming John Rambo, a prequel to the action-thriller franchise (beginning with 1982’s First Blood) that he starred in for 27 years. Stallone had hoped to use the magic of AI to turn himself into an 18 -year-old Vietnam war soldier; that never happened, and so Noah Centineo is set to play the character instead.
Earlier…
28th August 2025: Announced last year, I Play Rocky will tell the underdog story behind the underdog story – how Sylvester Stallone went from a relative unknown to the star of the multi-Oscar winning Rocky in 1976. Peter Farrelly, a filmmaker previously best known for his bawdy comedies before lifting an Oscar of his own for 2018’s Green Book, is set to direct, with Amazon MGM planning to release the finished film in cinemas. Peter Gamble (Office Uprising) is writing the script.
Farrelly has now found the actor who’ll play the 70s-era Stallone, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It’s Anthony Ippolito, who previously made an impression as a young, twitchy Al Pacino in Paramount series The Offer. That was another origin story about an award-winning 70s film – The Godfather – and the creative (and mob-related) challenges that went into making it.
Although it might sound logical that Ippolito’s turn as Pacino was what landed him the role of Stallone, it’s said that the actor actively pushed for it himself, and sent in an unsolicited audition tape of his performance as Sly to I Play Rocky's producers. Thanks to that tenacity, Ippolito will now play Rocky.
Stallone had few credits to his name when he wrote the screenplay for Rocky in the mid 1970s; about a 30-something Philadelphia boxer given a second chance at heavyweight success, it soon caught the interest of Hollywood producers. Stallone was offered some sizeable sums of money for his script, but he was determined to play the lead himself; he eventually got his way, foregoing a major salary in the process.
United Artists had little faith in the film, but its mix of grit and uplift made it one of the most profitable films of the 1970s – not to mention acclaimed. It was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three – including Best Picture – and spawned a franchise that has lasted for decades.
More on I Am Rocky as it comes in. Meanwhile, Paramount TV series The Offer is worth checking out; again, Ippolito is good value as a beginning-of-his-career Pacino feeling ill-at-ease on a movie set, while Dan Fogler is delightful as a 30-something, grandiose Francis Ford Coppola.
