Peter Farrelly Shares Details About His Sylvester Stallone Biopic

Earlier this year it was announced that Academy Award-winning director Peter Farrelly (Green Book) would be tackling the subject of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky for his next project, and now we have a few more details to share from the filmmaker himself. Released in 1976, Rocky would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture and make a household name out of Stallone, but it’s how the film got made in the first place that will be at the center of Farrelly’s biographical pic, I Play Rocky.

Speaking with Variety, Farrelly was joined by his brother, Bobby, to discuss a number of topics, including the latter’s new Jack Black movie, Dear Santa. The siblings have worked together on a number of films in the past, including hits like Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, and Shallow Hal. This time, Peter will be flying solo for I Play Rocky, which was penned by Peter Gamble. The director had nothing but good things to say about the script, mostly because it was filled with details he didn’t know about Stallone’s journey to get Rocky made.

“It’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. The guy who wrote it, Peter Gamble, came out of the blue. The guy teaches at USC. Toby Emmerich gave it to me, he’s a producer on it, and he said, ‘Hey, read this script. I think it’s special.’ It’s about the making of Rocky, and there’s a lot that I didn’t know. Stallone was homeless when he wrote that script, he was living in Penn Station, and he was doing softcore porn. He was broke. He had to sell his dog.”

The story of Stallone selling his dog, Butkus, has taken on urban legend status over the years, and while yes, he did have to sell his beloved pooch for $40 outside a 7-Eleven store, reports vary on how much he paid to get the dog back once he sold the script to Rocky. In 2017, the star told his Instagram followers that it was $15,000, but in 2013 he said it was only $3,000. Whatever the price was, it was more than worth it to see Stallone and his trusty bull mastiff together on screen, which added even more heart to the film.

Peter Farrelly Thinks Stallone’s Story is More Compelling Than ‘Rocky’

In addition to having to sell his dog just to be able to survive, Stallone faced an uphill battle from studio executives to get Rocky made. Like his character in the movie, he was an underdog from the start that no one expected to succeed, mainly because of the many obstacles placed in front of him. After being offered as much as $350,000 to sell the script and walk away, Stallone stuck to his guns, and said that he wouldn’t part with it unless he was able to star. A deal was eventually reached, but with one caveat: if the movie fell behind schedule for just a single day, he’d be off the picture.

Of course, we all know by now that director John G. Avildsen and Stallone were able to keep things moving, but as Farrelly tells it, it wasn’t for the studio’s lack of trying. “On the first day of the shoot, the studio said, ‘We need the exterior shot,’ so they did every running shot in that movie on day one. He ran 18 miles. He ended up in the hospital,” he told Variety, before adding:

“Day 2 was punching the meat. The meat is supposed to be cold, but no, it was frozen rock solid. He said, ‘No, this has to be thawed out.’ They said, ‘Well we could thaw with hair dryers, but it’s gonna take three hours.’ He said, ‘Let’s do it’ and broke both of his hands. He went to the hospital four times while making this movie, and he had four weeks to make it with $1 million. He did it. So this guy went from homeless to winning the Oscar. The character Rocky had a job at the beginning and he didn’t win the fight. He lasted in the fight.
To me, this is a better story
.”

There’s no word yet on who will be cast as Stallone in I Play Rocky, and it’s unclear at this point when the movie will head into production. Hopefully, it won’t end up in development hell, because this is one we’re eager to see. Rocky was such an inspirational film back in the day, that to witness how it all came together through the eyes of Farrelly is going to be a thing of beauty, and we have little doubt that the director will score a knockout with the biopic when it eventually happens.

Rocky Balboa is a struggling boxer trying to make the big time. Working in a meat factory in Philadelphia for a pittance, he also earns extra cash as a debt collector. When heavyweight champion Apollo Creed visits Philadelphia, his managers want to set up an exhibition match between Creed and a struggling boxer, touting the fight as a chance for a “nobody” to become a “somebody”. The match is supposed to be easily won by Creed, but someone forgot to tell Rocky, who sees this as his only shot at the big time.

Release Date

November 21, 1976

Runtime

1h 59m