Peter Farrelly premieres Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky at Toronto festival

World premiere in Toronto

Director Peter Farrelly presented his biographical drama I Play Rocky on Saturday, 12 September 2026, at the Princess of Wales Theatre during the Toronto International Film Festival. The screening took place as part of the festival's Special Presentations program, followed by a question-and-answer session featuring Farrelly, screenwriter Peter Gamble, and cast members Anthony Ippolito, Stephan James, and Jay Duplass. Farrelly previously won the festival's People's Choice Award in 2018 with Green Book before that title secured the Academy Award for Best Picture. Farrelly noted that the project began when he read Gamble's script, deciding immediately to direct the story. Distribution rights for the title belong to Amazon's MGM Studios in the United States and Elevation Pictures in Canada.

The Rocky story is actually a true story. Rocky is fiction, but Stallone's story is the Rocky story.

Portraying Stallone's early career

Actor Anthony Ippolito portrays Stallone, capturing his physique, gravelly voice, and the training scenes on the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. Ippolito spent more than a year studying Stallone's mannerisms and spoke directly with the actor prior to filming to discuss his early career. Stallone was born with facial paralysis on the lower left side after doctors severed a nerve during his birth, a complication that affected his speech and created hurdles during his early acting auditions. Farrelly cast Ippolito after reviewing a self-tape containing three scenes that the actor recorded in his grandmother's basement.

Since he was born, he had this facial paralysis that kind of made everything difficult. [The paralysis] obviously made trying to become an actor really difficult. And so, hearing his firsthand account of what that is like; he really just endured a lot and went through a lot. It's a miracle that this film came to be and that people still celebrate it 50 years later.

The standoff over the 1976 script

The film depicts Stallone as an obscure actor who wrote the Rocky screenplay while struggling financially and refused studio offers that excluded him from the lead role. Studio executives created hurdles and attempted to purchase the screenplay to cast established performers, but Stallone insisted on playing the title character. That persistence led to the 1976 release of Rocky by United Artists, which became the highest-grossing release of that year. The original film received ten Academy Award nominations and won three, including Best Picture, while the wider franchise later expanded under MGM to generate more than $1.7 billion at the global box office.

Stallone's private screening

Stallone, who reached age 80 in 2026, viewed the completed biopic in a solo screening prior to the festival premiere. Farrelly described the private screening as a tense process because the film was designed for group audiences, though Stallone gave the finished work his approval. Farrelly stated that the narrative focuses on perseverance in an entertainment business where commercial buyouts remain standard. Festival attendees cast ballots throughout the weekend for the People's Choice Award ahead of the festival's conclusion.

It was nerve-wracking because he (Stallone) saw it alone. And this is a great movie with a crowd. I didn't know how he was going to take it. But he loved it. Thank god.