I Play Rocky has won the Virginia Film Festival’s audience award for best narrative feature, giving Peter Farrelly’s drama a timely boost before its US cinema release next month.
Announced on 27 October, the result follows the festival’s five-day run in Charlottesville. Anthony Ippolito plays the young Sylvester Stallone, an unknown actor determined not just to sell his Rocky screenplay but to play the boxer himself. Hollywood wants the script. He wants the part. Neither is inclined to budge.
Farrelly, who directed Green Book, turns that stand-off into a film about the making of a film. AnnaSophia Robb, Matt Dillon and Stephan James are among the supporting cast.
The audience prize is a useful early sign of how the story plays beyond the industry circuit. The underdog, it seems, still knows how to work a room.
Amazon MGM Studios opens I Play Rocky in selected US cinemas on 6 November, before a wider rollout later that month.
