Sylvester Stallone's life is the real Rocky Balboa story, says director of biopic on actor
- Last updated: September 13, 2026 | 15:08
Sylvester Stallone's life is the real Rocky Balboa story, film director Peter Farrelly said as he walked down the red carpet for the premiere of "I Play Rocky" at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.
The movie garnered a standing ovation at the festival.
Eight years after "Green Book" took the Toronto film festival by storm, Peter Farrelly may have done it again.
Farrelly's "I Play Rocky," a boisterous tale about the making of Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky," was an immediate crowd-pleasing hit Saturday night at TIFF. Its raucous reception at the Princess of Wales Theatre suggested Farrelly may have again thrown a dark horse contender into the Oscar race.
At the least, "I Play Rocky" is sure to be a top contender for TIFF's top prize, the People's Choice Award, given how enthusiastic the festival crowd jumped to its feet to applaud the movie. In 2018, Farrelly's "Green Book" picked up that festival-goer-voted award on its way to winning best picture at the Academy Awards.
"I read this script and I thought it was the greatest script I'd ever read," Farrelly said of Peter Gamble's screenplay in a brief Q&A following the screening.
"I Play Rocky" chronicles Stallone's quixotic journey to write and star in his 1976 breakthrough film. In Farrelly's telling, it's a comic underdog story and an affectionate ode to moviemaking – the kind of tale Hollywood tends to love. Some of its best supporting performances are P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell as producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, and Tracy Letts as a composite studio chief.
Initial struggles
The film recounts Stallone's initial struggles as he tried to break into Hollywood.
It brings to the big screen the story behind the making of "Rocky," an underdog story that has inspired many fans of Stallone's fictional character Rocky Balboa's sheer determination.
Farrelly aims to present "I Play Rocky" to fans of the fictional Philadelphia boxer, and to a new, younger crowd unfamiliar with Stallone's struggles before he became the star of "Rocky."
Stallone wrote and starred in the 1976 film, now a cultural phenomenon.
"The Rocky story is actually a true story. Rocky is fiction, but Stallone's story is the Rocky story," Farrelly said.
"And the message is: you never give up and you never give in. You can't be bought out. And in this day and age, everybody's bought out, everybody goes for the money. He didn't."
Stallone was an obscure actor before his big break with 'Rocky.' It came when he wrote a screenplay about a boxer who, against all odds, gets his moment in the ring and seizes the opportunity – a story that reflected his own reality.
Poor to the point that he had to sell his dog because he could not afford to feed it, Stallone turned down studio offers for the script over one condition: he would only sell it if he could star in it.
"The depth that Stallone had gone to before he made this movie, and the battle was even when he was shooting the movie, it all got me, because I didn't know it all," Farrelly told AFP on the red carpet in Toronto.
The film was nominated for 10 Oscars and won three.
'Just hang in there'
The filmmaker said he aimed to convey the same message in his film as the 1976 original: "Just hang in there, be tough, you take some shots, but if you have integrity, you will win in the end."
Shot on a shoestring budget, "Rocky" ended up becoming the highest grossing film of 1976, catapulting Stallone to stardom and garnering 10 Academy Award nominations, winning three, including Best Picture.
Before the movie screened, Farrelly personally thanked Stallone for giving his blessing to make the film.
"I said from the beginning I'm not going to make the movie unless Sylvester Stallone signs off on it," Farrelly told AFP.
"And he read the script and said 'go ahead,' and he saw the movie, he was very happy, thank God."
Stallone saw the biopic alone
Asked if Stallone has watched the movie yet, Farrelly said the 80-year-old watched it alone.
"It was nerve-wracking because he (Stallone) saw it alone. And this is a great movie with a crowd. I didn't know how he was going to take it," Farrelly said. "But he loved it. Thank God."
Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone in "I play Rocky", portraying the actor's determination to become an actor and capturing his gravelly voice, muscular physique, while also recreating the iconic scene on Philadelphia's Rocky steps.
"The movie shows that it's not really that easy to be an actor sometimes, and it's just...absolutely surreal," Ippolito said.
Loudest applause
Ippolito drew the warmest cheers on Saturday for a role the 27-year-old Long Island native had dearly sought. The actor, who played Al Pacino in the Paramount+ series "The Offer," sent in audition tapes of himself performing scenes in his grandmother's basement before Farrelly had even begun the casting search.
"I looked at it and the search was over," Farrelly said. "That's the guy. We didn't have to go any further."
The film will be brought to theatres by Amazon's MGM Studios in the US and by Elevation Pictures in Canada.
Amazon MGM will release "I Play Rocky" in theatres on November 6.
TIFF concludes on September 20.
Agencies