The Making of ‘Rocky’ Is Getting Its Own Movie

One of the most beloved movies in history is getting its own movie, this one about its mythic creation story. The making of Rocky will soon be chronicled in a new film called I Play Rocky directed by Peter Farrelly of Green Book (and before that Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary and many other comedies with his brother Bobby Farrelly) fame.

Per Variety, I Play Rocky “will follow [Sylvester] Stallone long before his action hero days. Here, he’s a struggling actor whose partially paralyzed face and a speech impediment hasn’t left him in demand by Hollywood. But betting on his talent, Stallone writes a hot script that a big movie studio wants to buy. However, he refuses to sell it unless he gets to play the lead. Turning down an offer of life-changing money, he instead works for a pittance in order to get the movie made with himself as the title character.” The film is based on a script by Peter Gamble.

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Although never fictionalized onscreen before, Stallone’s story of his struggles prior to breaking through in Hollywood with Rocky has been told many times before, most recently in the Netflix documentary Sly. He supposedly had only a handful of dollars left in his bank account when he wrote the script, and yet he refused to let anyone else but him play the part because he wrote Rocky not to get rich but to launch his career as an actor. At one point he was offered hundreds of thousands for the script if he’d only let another actor play Philadelphia club fighter Rocky Balboa. Stallone still said no. He bet on himself, and he was proven right.

It’s such a wild feel-good story, it sounds like a movie, which is surely what Farrelly thinks and why he wants to direct this. But … who do you cast to play a young Sylvester Stallone? That is going to be a tough role to fill.