Sylvester Stallone Thinks I Play Rocky Is ‘Jumping the Gun’

After he wrote and starred in perhaps the most iconic sports-film franchise of all time, you’d think Sylvester Stallone would have some say in a movie about his life, especially one being made while he’s still around. The first Rocky movie celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, so the now-80-year-old Stallone appropriately has a debut memoir, The Steps, out now, and a biopic on the way inspired by the start of his career. But he had little to do with the latter. The actor admitted to having “mixed feelings” about the Peter Farrelly biopic, I Play Rocky, while in conversation with CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith at 92NY. “I’m not dead yet,” he joked when asked about his initial reaction. “Aren’t we jumping the gun a little bit?”

Set in 1975, I Play Rocky premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and hits theaters on November 6. It stars Anthony Ippolito — who previously played Al Pacino in The Offer on Paramount+ — as a young Stallone struggling to get Rocky made. The 27-year-old Ippolito, who could undoubtedly pass for Stallone’s son, told Variety that as soon as he’d heard about the making of the film, he set up a punching bag in his grandmother’s basement and recorded a self-tape to send to casting. After watching the video, Farrelly had found his star. “I actually thought it was me the first moment; there were a couple of angles,” Stallone said of seeing Ippolito in a separate video for the first time. “I go to my daughter and say, ‘That’s unbelievable.’” After seeing himself in Ippolito, Stallone changed his tune about the film, offering to speak with the young star and share more details about his life.

While it makes sense that Stallone would want to be involved in a movie about himself, if Mark Zuckerberg can come around to embracing Jesse Eisenberg’s depiction of him in The Social Network, then Stallone should be able to handle watching someone else punch meat in I Play Rocky.