Anthony Ippolito goes to Toronto as Sylvester Stallone. I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly's biographical drama about the making of the 1976 original, makes its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12. Amazon MGM Studios is set to release the film in the United States on November 6, 2026, with a wider expansion following on November 20.
The film traces how Stallone fought to sell a script the studios wanted without him attached, in a Hollywood that saw the project as too sentimental to survive. Peter Gamble wrote the screenplay. The cast includes AnnaSophia Robb as Stallone's first wife Sasha Czack, Jay Duplass as director John G. Avildsen, Stephan James as Carl Weathers, and Matt Dillon as Frank Stallone Sr. The film runs 127 minutes.
For Ippolito, this is a second entry in a specific genre: the biopic of the actor who made the film that changed Hollywood. He played Al Pacino in Paramount+'s 2022 miniseries The Offer, which traced the making of The Godfather. The niche is narrow. He has returned to it.
According to published reports, Stallone learned about the project by reading about it, not from the filmmakers, though he remained open to serving as a consultant. Farrelly's Green Book debuted at TIFF in 2018 and won the Oscar for Best Picture. He is returning to the festival with the same bet.
