Actor Anthony Ippolito, known for starring in series The Offer (2022) as well as films like Purple Hearts (2022) and Pixels (2015), will play a young Sylvester Stallone in the upcoming movie I Play Rocky.

To be directed by acclaimed filmmaker Peter Farrelly, the film will explore the story behind Stallone’s iconic movie Rocky (1976).

Farrelly will produce the film with Toby Emmerich, the former Warner Bros film chief, and Christian Baha, and direct from a screenplay by Peter Gamble. Stallone, who was a struggling actor with a partially paralysed face and a speech impediment in the 1970s, wrote the script of the 1976 boxing drama and also headlined the movie that won three Oscars and spawned a film franchise.