After its premiere at the 2026 TIFF and ahead of its expansion from select theaters to a wide release on Nov. 20, public reception has only grown for I Play Rocky (2026). On Rotten Tomatoes, the film is at a 98% Popcornmeter from 100+ ratings and an 88% Tomatometer from 113 reviews on Nov. 11 – in fact, as of Nov. 11, winning out against all nine previous Rocky franchise movies in audience score, the highest among them being Creed III (2023) at 95% Popcornmeter.
At TIFF, it is the first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award, behind La Bola Negra. Nov. 6-8, Amazon MGM Studios opened the film at seven domestic theaters. The weekend grossed $337,465, or $48,209 per theater. Peter Farrelly directed I Play Rocky. Anthony Ippolito plays a young Sylvester Stallone, who tries to get Rocky made and insists on playing Rocky Balboa himself. Peter Gamble wrote the film on spec. AnnaSophia Robb played Stallone’s first wife Sasha; Matt Dillon played Frank Stallone Sr., and P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell played original Rocky producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff.
Ippolito received the Breakthrough Award at SCAD Savannah Film Festival and was also commended by Stallone himself, who left Ippolito largely to his own craft except consulting with the young Italian American actor. According to ScreenRant, commenting on Ippolito’s performance, the action star said,
It was very surreal because at first I was gonna be hypercritical, like that’s me. I don’t walk like that. But I did walk like that. I did talk like that. I’m realizing this guy did a magnificent job, and I actually forgot I was me, and I sat back and watched the movie like the audience.
Ippolito was also Al Pacino in The Offer (2022), a Paramount+ miniseries that dramatizes the making of The Godfather (1972). Both tasked him with exploring legendary actors before they became household names. Behind the scenes, he seems to be making his own version of the underdog story: he heard about the production through a news article and decided to take a shot at it before anyone asked him to audition. He told TheWrap at the 2026 TIFF,
I hung a heavy bag in my grandma’s basement… I didn’t have a script, so I was just working with my imagination, trying to capture the physicality of the character.
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