Peter Farrelly (“Green Book”) is set to direct a film inspired by the story of how Sylvester Stallone came to make his 1976 boxing classic “Rocky.” (via IndieWire)
The film is titled “I Play Rocky.”. No word yet on whether Stallone gave his blessing for this project, but the plot it said to follow “a struggling actor with a partially paralyzed face and a speech impediment who writes a script that a big movie studio wants to buy, but he refuses to sell it unless he gets to play the lead.”
The logline continues: “Turning down an offer of life-changing money, he instead works for pennies to get the movie made with himself in the starring role.” The movie becomes the biggest box office hit of 1976, garnering 10 Academy Award nominations and winning Best Picture.
Casting is currently underway for the role of Stallone. It should be noted that Stallone is not mentioned in the official logline, so they might not even have the rights to use his name yet. Peter Gamble (“Office Uprising”) is writing the script for the film.
Stallone’s story is well known. He moved to NYC in the early ‘70s, struggling as an actor, and on the verge of calling it quits on his acting career. That all changed when Stallone wrote the screenplay for “Rocky” in three days, shortly after watching a Muhammad Ali fight on TV.
The script kept getting rejected and ABC, at one point, dabbled with the idea of turning it into a TV movie. Through all of this, Stallone had an ally, actor Henry Winkler, who kept pushing the script to studios until it was finally greenlit by United Artists.
The rest, as they say, is history. “Rocky” would go on to be this massive commercial success and get nominated for 10 Oscars, winning three of them — including Best Picture and Best Director. The film has since spawned nine other films, including the “Creed” trilogy.
Farrelly recently released the comedy “Ricky Stanicky,” which was actually a decent laugh. Before that he directed the mixed reviewed “The Greatest Beer Run Ever,” and, of course, he won two Oscars for the 2018 Best Picture winner “Green Book.”