Sylvester Stallone has a message for the filmmakers behind the upcoming biopic about his own rise to stardom: slow down. The 80-year-old actor and filmmaker took to social media this week to react to I Play Rocky, the Peter Farrelly-directed drama that chronicles the making of the 1976 Oscar winner Rocky and Stallone's fight to star in it. His verdict was characteristically blunt.

"I'm not dead yet," Stallone wrote. "Aren't we jumping the gun?"

The post, which quickly circulated among film journalists and fans, captures the strange position Stallone finds himself in this fall: he is both the subject of a major awards-season hopeful and a living, working artist with his own opinions about how his story gets told. I Play Rocky is scheduled to hit theaters on November 6, 2026, distributed in Hollywood and shot in English.

A story built on one actor's refusal to take no

According to the film's official synopsis, I Play Rocky dramatizes the period when Stallone was an unknown actor with an unshakable conviction - that he was not merely meant to write Rocky, but to embody Rocky Balboa himself. Rejected at seemingly every turn, he wagered everything on his own talent, refusing to surrender the lead role despite long odds.

That premise gives the movie its tension: a young, broke Stallone turning down offers to sell his script unless he could star in it, a decision that eventually paid off with a Best Picture Oscar and a franchise that defined a career.

Farrelly, known for comedies like There's Something About Mary and Green Book, directs from a screenplay that has drawn attention for its meta framing. The cast is led by Anthony Ippolito as Stallone, with AnnaSophia Robb as Sasha Czack, Stephan James as Carl Weathers, Matt Dillon as Frank Stallone Sr., P.J. Byrne as Irwin Winkler, Jay Duplass as John Avildsen, Kiki Seto as Talia Shire and Toby Kebbell as Robert Chartoff. The runtime is 128 minutes, and the film is classified as Drama and History.

Stallone's reaction fits a pattern

Stallone's comment is not the first time he has pushed back on projects that treat his life as finished business. He has spent the past several years expanding the Rocky universe through the Creed spinoffs and revisiting other signature characters, including Rambo and The Expendables. For an actor who built a brand on refusing to stay down, being narrated in the past tense by a younger performer is an odd experience.

The remark also lands with a wink - Stallone is not literally accusing Farrelly of staging a posthumous tribute. But it raises a question that Hollywood has grappled with before: when a living legend becomes the subject of a biopic, whose version of the story wins?

A crowded biopic landscape

I Play Rocky arrives in a season thick with real-life portraits. The film's November 6 date puts it in the heart of the fall corridor, where dramas aimed at adult audiences jostle for attention before the holidays. Its awards prospects remain speculative; TMDb currently lists a rating of 0/10, reflecting that no audience scores have been recorded yet.

What is clear is that the movie's marketing has an unusual asset: its real-life subject is available for comment, and he is not shy. Whether Stallone's skepticism helps or hurts the film may depend on how audiences read his tone - as a playful jab from a man who has never stopped competing, or as a genuine objection from someone who would rather tell his own story.

For now, the film remains on schedule. Farrelly and the cast have not publicly responded to Stallone's post. But the exchange has already done something a trailer might struggle to achieve: it has made I Play Rocky a conversation about the man himself, still very much alive and still very much in the ring.

Source: Hollywood Reporter