There are films that inspire, that get us cheering, that make us smile, fill us with emotion, and reveal us to ourselves. A film that does all of those is a million-to-one shot.
Rocky is exactly that film — and has been since it became a knockout phenomenon 50 years ago. Before it was established as one of the best-known movie titles in history, Rocky won over audiences on its way to being a three-time Academy Award® winner, Directors Guild of America winner, and Golden Globe winner. (Bill Conti’s No.1 Billboard-charting theme still gets people on their feet.) Laced into our collective memory is the story of small-time boxer Rocky Balboa, who — while romancing local girl Adrian and working as a loan shark’s collector — is plucked from obscurity when heavyweight champion Apollo Creed selects him as an opponent for a Fourth of July bout in Philadelphia. Thanks to heart, decency, the love of Adrian, and the tough love of his trainer Mickey, Rocky turns what was seen as a stunt into a moment of glory.
But few people know the fight that went on behind the scenes, and how SYLVESTER STALLONE — a struggling actor living in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood who, unable to get parts, wrote his own screenplay with a role perfect for him to play — got his original script into the hands of producing team IRWIN WINKLER and ROBERT CHARTOFF, who bought Rocky to make a low-budget boxing drama, hiring filmmaker JOHN G. AVILDSEN to direct.
When the studio Winkler and Chartoff brought the film to, United Artists, began to set up the project, however, they insisted a known actor play Rocky. (The studio’s main choice: Love Story and Paper Moon star Ryan O’Neal.) They offered Stallone — who’d only played bit roles in TV and movies and slept in Penn Station with his dog when he was homeless — an addition to their purchase price for his script if he gave up the role. He said no. They offered him still more money. He said no again, though he and his pregnant wife, SASHA CZACK, needed the money.
The studio kept offering more, and more, and more money to the 29-year-old actor-writer to get him to give up the role that Stallone knew could — like Rocky’s fight in the story — change his life. Though turning down the money was tough, Stallone had one bargaining chip, and he stuck to it: “I play Rocky.”
Yet when they finally relented and allowed Stallone to play the pugilistic protagonist he created for himself, United Artists then put strict limits on the production: Rocky could not go a dollar over budget or a day over schedule otherwise Stallone would be replaced, and the film’s location was moved from New York to Philadelphia for financial reasons. Rocky, filmed in 28 days for about $1 million, went on to make over $117 million — a blockbuster in that era — after it was released around Thanksgiving 1976. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning three: Best Editing, Best Director for John G. Avildsen, and, most incredibly, Best Picture (defeating four heavy hitters: Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory, Sidney Lumet’s Network, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver). Stallone became the first person to be nominated for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay for the same film since Orson Welles and 1941’s Citizen Kane.
Now, Academy Award-winning director PETER FARRELLY (the Best Picture-winning Green Book) brings this true underdog tale to the screen with I PLAY ROCKY. Written by PETER GAMBLE, the film stars ANTHONY IPPOLITO in a transformative performance as Stallone, and costars MATT DILLON, ANNASOPHIA ROBB, P.J. BYRNE, TOBY KEBBELL, TRACY LETTS, JAY DUPLASS, STEPHAN JAMES, and KIKI SETO.