The new trailer for Peter Farrelly’s Stallone biopic arrives stacked with festival raves — and Anthony Ippolito’s transformation is the whole show.
By Becky Monroe — The Cinephile, CelebnMusic247
Fifty years after Rocky, the most famous underdog story in Hollywood is getting retold from the other side of the camera. Amazon MGM Studios has released a new trailer for I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s biopic about a broke, unknown Sylvester Stallone who watched a Muhammad Ali fight, wrote a script in three days — and then refused to sell it unless the studio let him star in it himself.
Anthony Ippolito, who played a young Al Pacino in The Offer, takes on Stallone, and the trailer leans hard into the transformation: the voice, the slouch, the recreated Rocky scenes, and the moment Stallone tells the studio he is meant to play Balboa. Amazon is selling the film on its early word, and the word is loud — the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to excellent reviews, and the trailer wears them on its sleeve, including Adam Courtliff of Adam Reviews Films calling it “a masterpiece” and KTLA-TV’s Scott Mantz praising Ippolito’s portrayal as “spectacular.”
The supporting cast fills in the 1976 of it all: AnnaSophia Robb as Stallone’s wife Sasha — the pair anchored the first full clip Amazon released on October 15 — Matt Dillon as Frank Stallone Sr., Stephan James as Carl Weathers, Toby Kebbell and P.J. Byrne as producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, and Jay Duplass as director John G. Avildsen. Farrelly directs from Peter Gamble’s script.
The stakes are baked into the calendar. The Rocky saga — six Stallone films and three Creed spinoffs — has grossed more than $1.7 billion worldwide since 1976, and this is the first Rocky-centered project since 2006’s Rocky Balboa. I Play Rocky opens in select theaters November 6, expanding wide November 20, fifty years after the original changed Stallone’s life and everybody else’s idea of what a sports movie could be.
The 247 Take — Biopics about living legends usually play it safe; this one has the advantage of a true story that is already shaped like a Rocky movie — a nobody betting everything on himself against a room full of people saying no. If Ippolito’s turn is half what the Toronto crowd says it is, November’s most interesting fight won’t be in a ring. It’ll be at the box office.
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Sources: MovieWeb | Flickering Myth | ComingSoon
