An Actor Playing an Actor Playing a Guy Is This the New Rocky?

Fifty years after Rocky became the ultimate Hollywood underdog story, a new biopic follows Sylvester Stallone’s fight to star in the film he wrote.

Are you seated for this? If you saw Rocky in cinemas, chances are you are. It came out 50 years ago. Where did the time go, and who was the idiot who signed off on this much of it passing?
Sylvester Stallone was about as scrappy as the character he played. With a lisp and a partially paralysed face, he was not the typical leading man. He wrote Rocky while he was a scruffy, unemployed actor, but refused to sell the script unless he got the lead. Ballsy — and ballsy enough to work. The film launched both a career and a franchise. Including the Creed series, the Rocky films have grossed around US$1.7 billion.

Now, 50 years later, rather than remaking the film, Hollywood is giving Stallone his due with a biopic about that period of his life. The actor tasked with playing him is Anthony Ippolito, best known for portraying Al Pacino in the Paramount+ miniseries The Offer. Some people are character actors; others are actors’ actors. At this rate, he is going to run out of Italian-American stars to play.

The film also stars Kiki Seto, AnnaSophia Robb and Stephan James. Stallone has said he is not officially attached to the project, although he did speak with Ippolito about that period of his life. “He couldn’t have been more gracious and more generous about sharing what that experience was for him,” Ippolito said.