EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Matt Dillon (Crash) has been tapped to play Frank Stallone Sr., father of Sylvester Stallone, in Amazon MGM Studios‘ I Play Rocky, the making-of-Rocky movie from director Peter Farrelly, where Anthony Ippolito stars as a young Sylvester.
Immigrating to the U.S. from Italy as a teenager, Stallone Sr. was a hairdresser who in the course of his life wound up opening a series of barber shops, salons and beauty schools across the East Coast. As recounted in Sly, Netflix’s 2023 documentary on Sylvester, Stallone Sr. was a complicated man — hardworking and charismatic, but at the same time both physically and emotionally abusive to his son. In the doc, Sylvester remembers, “My father was Rambo in reality. Nothing was ever settled verbally.”
Stallone nonetheless sought his father’s approval throughout his life, including through his art. He arranged for him to make a cameo in 1976’s Rocky, as a timekeeper.
Written by Peter Gamble, I Play Rocky is billed as an electrifying true story about an unknown actor with an unshakable belief that he wasn’t just meant to write Rocky — he was meant to be Rocky Balboa. Told no at every turn, Stallone bets everything on himself, holding the line on playing the lead against seemingly impossible odds. The result is the ultimate underdog story behind the ultimate underdog movie.
As previously announced, Stephan James also stars as Carl Weathers, the actor who played Rocky’s rival turned friend and mentor Apollo Creed over the course of the film franchise. AnnaSophia Robb was announced this morning as playing Sylvester Stallone’s first wife, Sasha Czack. Toby Emmerich and Christian Baha are producing the pic, intended for release in theaters, with FilmNation Entertainment handling production services and international sales.
Dillon earned his Oscar nomination for a role of similar gravitas to the one he’s tackling in I Play Rocky. That would be John Ryan, the racist and otherwise morally corrupt LAPD officer in Paul Haggis’ Best Picture winner Crash. He’s displayed his dramatic chops in myriad other projects, ranging from The Outsiders and Rumble Fish to Drugstore Cowboy, though he’s equally known for comedic abilities displayed in films like There’s Something About Mary.
Recently seen in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and the Apple series High Desert, the actor is repped by UTA, The Artists Partnership, Untitled Entertainment, and Heller Law.
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