I Play Rocky: The underdog takes on Hollywood
Peter Farrelly’s crowd-pleasing account of how Sylvester Stallone fought to become Rocky Balboa opens Cairo’s 47th International Film Festival.
There is a plucky irony in I Play Rocky: before Sylvester Stallone could persuade the world to cheer for a fictional boxer, he had to fight his own battle with Hollywood. The man who created Rocky Balboa was himself an outsider, an aspiring actor with a screenplay, a fiercely held conviction and precious little leverage. His demand to play the leading role in his own film could easily have been a career-ending act of hubris. Instead, it became the first round of a remarkable Hollywood victory.
Directed by Peter Farrelly, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Green Book, I Play Rocky revisits the improbable gestation of the 1976 boxing drama that became a global phenomenon. Stallone, played by Anthony Ippolito, is struggling to establish himself when inspiration strikes.
After watching Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner, he conceives a story about an obscure boxer who gets an extraordinary opportunity to prove himself. The screenplay attracts industry interest, but the producers have another idea: buy the script and cast a recognised star. Stallone refuses to surrender the character he has created. The ensuing contest, fought in offices and negotiations rather than a boxing ring, becomes a test of whether Hollywood will back a new voice or simply purchase a promising property.
The casting is crucial. Ippolito, previously seen as Al Pacino in The Offer, takes on the daunting task of playing a younger Stallone, a man whose eventual screen persona is already part of popular culture. Around him, Matt Dillon, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, Tracy Letts, P.J. Byrne, Jay Duplass and Stephan James lend the story a strong supporting ensemble. James plays Carl Weathers, whose Apollo Creed would become Rocky’s formidable opponent in the original film. The recreation of this formative period in American cinema offers the pleasure of seeing familiar screen history from the other side of the camera.
Farrelly understands the commercial appeal of the material. This is not an austere investigation of artistic compromise, nor a revisionist exposé of the film industry. It is a buoyant, accessible showbiz story, with the audience invited to enjoy the mounting absurdity of a struggling actor insisting that he, rather than an established name, must embody his creation. The entertainment lies in the collision between ambition and conventional wisdom: executives may recognise a good story, but can they recognise the person who has to tell it?
There is, of course, a danger in dramatising a success story whose ending is already written. We know that Rocky will be made, that it will win three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and that its central character will become one of cinema’s most enduring underdogs. Suspense must therefore come from the struggle itself, from the cost of persistence and the possibility that conviction might tip over into folly. The familiar destination makes the journey no less revealing, although the film’s appeal depends on how much personality and friction Farrelly can bring to the well-established legend.
As an opening-night choice for Cairo, the timing is particularly persuasive. The 47th Cairo International Film Festival runs from 11 to 20 November 2026, and the original Rocky and the festival both date from 1976. Half a century later, their anniversaries converge in a film about the stubborn belief that cinema can change a life. The selection also offers a suitably celebratory introduction to a festival seeking both international recognition and a broad audience: a Hollywood origin story with a familiar name, a recognisable struggle and an obvious emotional hook.
There is a further attraction for a festival audience. I Play Rocky turns the spotlight on the mechanics of filmmaking itself: the negotiations, the compromises, the casting decisions and the precarious moment when a private creative conviction becomes a public gamble. Its subject is not simply the making of a hit, but the question of who gets to control a story once the industry sees its commercial potential.
Cairo could hardly have chosen a more accessible invitation to its anniversary year. I Play Rocky promises nostalgia without requiring an audience to be a boxing enthusiast, and a Hollywood tale whose central fight is for authorship as much as fame. Its most engaging proposition is also its simplest: sometimes the person who knows a character best is the one everyone else is trying to keep out of the ring.
CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 11-20 November