Stallone Turned Down Six Figures to Play Rocky Himself. Fifty Years Later, Toronto Stood and Cheered for the Movie About It

Here's the part of the Rocky legend that still gets me. In the spring of 1975, Sylvester Stallone was an actor in his late twenties, so broke he'd end up selling his own dog, holding a screenplay he'd written in about three and a half days. United Artists liked the script. It just wanted somebody bigger to star in it, and the names that got tossed around included Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds. Stallone was offered a six-figure payday to hand it over and step aside. He said no.

That refusal is the entire engine of I Play Rocky, the new Peter Farrelly movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, Sept. 12, and has been one of the festival's most talked-about crowd-pleasers ever since. I haven't seen it, and unless you were in Toronto you haven't either, so everything below comes from the people who have: critics, the director, and the crowd at the Princess of Wales Theatre that first night. TIFF announces its audience award Sunday morning, which felt like a good moment to sort out what this movie actually is, who's cheering, and who isn't.

A movie about saying no

The setup is simple enough that the title covers most of it. Anthony Ippolito, 27, plays a young Stallone who's out of money, out of luck and sitting on a script he won't sell unless he gets to play the fighter. IndieWire's review notes that Ippolito says the title out loud in the movie, and describes it as both a demand and a plea. Ippolito spent roughly a year and a half preparing, talked with Stallone before filming, and had a head start on the role: he played a young Al Pacino in Paramount's The Offer. The film, rated PG-13, runs two hours and eight minutes and comes from a screenplay by Peter Gamble, a writer with very few credits before this.

Farrelly filled most of the rest of the cast with people playing real figures from the original production. AnnaSophia Robb is Sasha Czack, Stallone's first wife, who really did work as the stills photographer on Rocky. Matt Dillon plays his father, Frank Sr., a character at least one review calls verbally abusive. Toby Kebbell and P.J. Byrne are the producers, Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler; Stephan James is Carl Weathers; Jay Duplass is director John G. Avildsen. Tracy Letts plays a studio executive who, by most accounts, is an invention.

What makes the material so good is how much of it is true. Stallone started writing right after watching Muhammad Ali outlast a long shot named Chuck Wepner into the 15th round in March 1975. Stallone has denied that Wepner was his inspiration, and Wepner later sued and settled for an undisclosed amount, so even the origin story comes with fine print. Then the real production turned out to be almost comically cheap. The budget landed a little over $1 million, cameras rolled in Philadelphia in January 1976, and Garrett Brown's brand-new Steadicam let the operator chase Rocky up the museum steps. The movie that came out of all that made about $225 million worldwide and won three Oscars, Best Picture among them.

Collider's review says Farrelly leans hard into the scrappiness: Stallone injures himself running on the first day of shooting, and he punches a slab of meat that's still frozen because nobody has time to wait for it to thaw. There's also a dog. Stallone's bulldog Butkus is a running thread; according to Edward Douglas' review, Stallone sells him when he can't afford to keep him and buys him back later, though Douglas points out the dollar amounts on screen may not match real life. Even The Guardian, which found the film emotionally thin overall, singles out the Butkus scenes as genuinely touching.

Knockout or tribute act?

The Rotten Tomatoes number has moved around a lot in a week. When the first ten or eleven reviews landed after the premiere, the film was at 64%. It passed through 67% and 75% along the way, and as of Saturday it's at 80% from 35 reviews. That's a healthy score, and the direction of travel has to be good news for Amazon. But the split underneath it hasn't gone anywhere.

The fans are loud. Variety's Owen Gleiberman calls it a "cleverly crafted crowd-pleaser" and argues the whole thing hinges on Ippolito getting Stallone right, which, in his view, he does. ScreenRant gave it a 9 out of 10 and called it one of the year's best so far, praising a supporting cast that includes Stephan James as the late Carl Weathers.

The doubters are more specific than I expected, which I respect. Slant's Eli Friedberg gave it 1.5 out of 4 and argued that Farrelly never digs beneath Stallone's familiar surface. Screen Daily's Robert Daniels called it a sentimental pastiche that recreates famous scenes while leaving most of the original's humanity behind. TheWrap's Chase Hutchinson felt the story lacked real passion and heart. Right in the middle, RogerEbert.com's Brian Tallerico gave it 2.5 out of 4 and still called it remarkably crowd-pleasing. Even friendly voices flag the same soft spot: IndieWire says the movie pulls its punches, and Collider admits it gets overly sentimental and treats Stallone in almost mythic terms.

Farrelly's own history is part of the backdrop. Green Book won TIFF's audience prize in 2018, then Best Picture, and that win is still a debate starter. At least one critic said outright that they went in with low expectations, and another admitted to some worry before calling the movie a knockout.

Stallone's blessing, and a messy timeline

The most human moment of the whole run might have happened nowhere near a screen. Farrelly told Entertainment Weekly's studio at TIFF that Stallone watched the finished film alone at home, which made him nervous, since the movie is built to be felt with a crowd. Then the phone rang. "He loved it," Farrelly said, adding that Stallone called right after. Ippolito has said that Stallone and his wife, Jennifer Flavin, both saw it and were enthusiastic.

It's a nice ending to a story that started less smoothly. Back in September 2025, about a month before cameras rolled, Stallone said nobody had contacted him about the project, that he'd only learned of it by reading about it, and that he'd have been glad to help as a consultant. Farrelly's version is different: he told producer Toby Emmerich he wouldn't direct the movie unless Stallone wanted it made, then sat down with Stallone and said so to his face. Both accounts were reported, they don't quite line up, and I'm not going to pretend I know whose memory is better. What I can say is that by July Stallone was posting the trailer on his own Instagram with a message congratulating the cast and crew, and that before the premiere, according to Farrelly, he was on the phone saying he loved it.

Sunday's award, and a moving release date

TIFF announces its People's Choice Awards Sunday morning at a livestreamed press conference, and the prize has a solid record as the starting gun for Oscar season. Green Book won it in 2018. Last year's winner was Chloé Zhao's Hamnet, and Jessie Buckley went on to win Best Actress for it. Gold Derby's odds piece has I Play Rocky in the mix with Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut (which came to Toronto from Telluride, with Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti) and Wild Horse Nine. It also points to Netflix's La Bola Negra, from the Spanish filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, which drew a standing ovation of its own. Gold Derby's one real question about the Rocky movie is whether the love skews toward a certain age bracket. A festival crowd in September isn't a ticket-buying crowd in November, but an audience prize at least tells you people left the theater happy.

As for when you can see it, this is where sources disagree. Amazon's own release page, dated July 15, says the film opens in select theaters on Nov. 6 and everywhere later in the month. Earlier announcements had a limited launch on Nov. 13 and a nationwide release on Nov. 20, and the nationwide date has stayed at Nov. 20 in most of the coverage since. Rotten Tomatoes still lists Nov. 13 for the limited launch, while Wikipedia says the limited release was moved up a week. I'd trust the studio's own page, but I'd wait for a fresh announcement before planning a weekend around it.

Whichever date holds, it lands around a big birthday. Rocky reached New York theaters in November 1976, and Amazon MGM, Park Circus and Fathom are bringing a 4K restoration back to theaters as Rocky 50 from Nov. 7 to 11, with an exclusive first-look scene from I Play Rocky attached.