Stephan James plays Carl Weathers in I Play Rocky, the biopic about making the 1976 classic that Sylvester Stallone didn’t even know existed.
Stephan James is about to step into the ring as one of cinema’s most iconic athletes, and he did not even need to bulk up to win the role. I Play Rocky landed the If Beale Street Could Talk star to play Carl Weathers in the behind-the-scenes biopic about the making of the 1976 classic.
Directed by Peter Farrelly from a script by Peter Gamble, I Play Rocky chronicles Sylvester Stallone’s desperate gamble to write and star in Rocky when nobody believed an unknown actor could carry a film. Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone, AnnaSophia Robb plays his first wife Sasha Czack, and Matt Dillon plays his father Frank Stallone Sr. The Amazon MGM Studios production is scheduled for a limited theatrical release on November 13, 2026, followed by a wide release on November 20.
I Play Rocky Secretly Filmed Without Stallone
I Play Rocky carries a delicious layer of irony that no marketing campaign could manufacture. Sylvester Stallone, the actual subject of the film, only discovered it existed after reading news reports. He confirmed to outlets that nobody from the production had reached out, leaving him to learn about his own biopic the same way the rest of us learn about celebrity drama—through our phones. He has since said he would be open to consulting, but as of filming, the man who created Rocky had zero input on how his story was being told.
Stephan James joins an ensemble that includes Jay Duplass as director John G. Avildsen, P.J. Byrne as producer Irwin Winkler, and Toby Kebbell as producer Robert Chartoff. James is no stranger to playing real-life figures, having portrayed Jesse Owens in Race and John Lewis in Selma, but Carl Weathers presents a different challenge—a football player turned actor who brought athletic swagger and unexpected warmth to Apollo Creed. It’s like Bohemian Rhapsody if Freddie Mercury found out about the movie from a push notification.
How do you make a movie about Rocky without telling Rocky?
November 13 is the date to watch. I Play Rocky promises to deliver the ultimate underdog story behind the ultimate underdog movie, and the fact that its real-life hero found out about it on Twitter only makes the underdog narrative stranger and more compelling.
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