Anthony Ippolito starred as Al Pacino in The Offer, and now he’s going to play another Italian-American acting legend. He’s set to star as a young Sylvester Stallone in the new biopic I Play Rocky. The Amazon MGM Studios film will depict the saga of the young Stallone trying to sell the script for Rocky while also insisting that he play the lead.
According to reports, Ippolito sent an unsolicited audition tape to the film’s producers; the tape sufficiently impressed them that Ippolito landed the coveted role in the film, which Amazon is targeting for a theatrical release. Ippolito previously starred as Al Pacino in The Offer, a Paramount+ series about the behind-the-scenes drama involved in the making of another classic of 1970s cinema, The Godfather. He has also starred in Grand Army and Purple Hearts. I Play Rocky will be helmed by Peter Farrelly; while he’s well-known for making comedies with his brother Bobby, including Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, he has a significant solo filmography, as well. He co-wrote and directed the Oscar-winning film Green Book, and directed the comedy Ricky Stanicky for Amazon last year. His next film is the Mark Wahlberg–Paul Walter Hauser action comedy Balls Up. The film will be written by Peter Gamble (Office Uprising).
How Did ‘Rocky’ Get Made?
Inspired by the championship match between the legendary Muhammed Ali and the obscure-but-scrappy Chuck Wepner, Stallone wrote Rocky in three and a half days. Stallone was a young up-and-coming actor at the time, with roles in Death Race 2000, Capone, and The Lords of Flatbush under his belt. His co-star in the latter, Henry Winkler, used his connections to help Stallone sell it to ABC as a TV movie, but the network wanted a professional writer to do a rewrite. Undaunted, Stallone got United Artists to agree to do the movie on a low budget of $1.1 million USD with him as the star. The studio didn’t expect the film to be a success, but it became the top-grossing movie of 1976, earning $225 million and winning three Oscars, including Best Picture. It went on to spawn six sequels plus three spin-off films centering around the son of Rocky’s opponent Apollo Creed.
Stallone himself is not involved with the making of I Play Rocky, which is one of two in-development films that will explore the early roles of “The Italian Stallion.” A prequel to First Blood, outlining the Vietnam War experience of Green Beret John Rambo, is also in the works, with Noah Centineo signed to play the lead. Stallone is also not attached to that film.
I Play Rocky is in development.
via Collider