The London Film Festival’s closely guarded surprise screening turned out to be “I Play Rocky,” Peter Farrelly’s drama about Sylvester Stallone’s fight to star in the movie that made him famous. The announcement landed Friday night at the festival’s customary secret slot, ending weeks of speculation that had ranged from a stealth horror sequel to an unannounced awards contender. Instead, audiences got a 128-minute Hollywood drama set for theatrical release on November 6, 2026.

Anthony Ippolito leads the cast as Stallone, the then-unknown actor who wrote “Rocky” and refused to sell it unless he could play the lead. The film, written for the screen and directed by Farrelly, dramatizes that standoff: studios wanted a name for the part, Stallone kept saying no, and the project teetered for years before United Artists finally relented. The festival screening marks the movie’s first public showing, and it arrives with no festival-circuit preamble - no Cannes bow, no Telluride sneak, just a slot on the LFF schedule labeled “surprise film.”

Farrelly, best known for broad comedies like “There’s Something About Mary” and the Oscar-winning “Green Book,” is an unexpected choice to tell this particular story. But the director has spoken in recent years about wanting to work on material with a harder emotional edge, and the Stallone saga - a writer betting his career on his own face - fits that ambition. The supporting cast is deep: AnnaSophia Robb plays Sasha Czack, Stallone’s first wife; Stephan James steps in as Carl Weathers, the former football player turned actor who played Apollo Creed; Matt Dillon appears as Frank Stallone Sr., the family patriarch; P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell play producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff; Jay Duplass is director John Avildsen; and Kiki Seto takes the role of Talia Shire, who played Adrian.

The film’s official synopsis describes Stallone as an actor with “an unshakable belief that he wasn’t just meant to write Rocky - he was meant to be Rocky Balboa,” and notes that he was told no at every turn. That framing puts the movie in the crowded field of behind-the-scenes Hollywood dramas, but the specificity of the Stallone story - the rejection, the stubbornness, the eventual Oscar-winning result - gives it a different texture than the usual industry nostalgia.

The surprise screening format has become a signature of the London Film Festival in recent years, with organizers keeping the title off all advance materials and revealing it only as the lights go down. Previous surprise picks have ranged from studio tentpoles to art-house imports, and the selection of “I Play Rocky” suggests LFF programmers see it as a crowd-pleaser with awards-season potential. The film is an English-language Hollywood production, and its November 6 release date places it squarely in the fall corridor where adult dramas often try to build momentum.

What remains unclear is how the film handles the more complicated chapters of Stallone’s life and career - the ones that came after “Rocky” turned him into a star. The synopsis stays focused on the pre-fame struggle, and the runtime of just over two hours suggests a tight narrative centered on the writing and casting fight rather than a full-life biopic. Farrelly has not indicated whether the film ends with the 1976 release, the Oscars, or somewhere earlier.

The TMDb rating currently sits at 0/10, which simply reflects that the film has no user votes yet; it is not a measure of reception. Early social reactions from the LFF screening were not immediately available in aggregated form, and no critic reviews have been logged since the embargo remains in place. USA Film News will update this story as reviews and further festival screenings are confirmed.

For now, the takeaway is straightforward: the London Film Festival’s mystery slot belongs to a movie about a man who refused to take no for an answer, directed by a filmmaker who has spent his career alternating between crowd-pleasing comedy and earnest drama. Whether “I Play Rocky” lands as a serious awards player or a curiosity depends on how Farrelly handles a story whose ending - the one where Rocky wins the Oscar for Best Picture - is already known to everyone in the room. The film opens nationwide on November 6.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter