Apollo Creed has entered the story. Amazon MGM Studios has released two new clips from I Play Rocky, its drama about the making of Rocky, and the standout moment is the arrival of Stephan James as Carl Weathers, the actor who became Rocky Balboa’s greatest rival in the ring.
The first clip, “Meeting Carl Weathers,” is built around that introduction. James makes his entrance as Weathers in a scene with Anthony Ippolito’s Sylvester Stallone, alongside Toby Kebbell, P.J. Byrne and Jay Duplass. Weathers was already an established name when Stallone, an unknown with a script nobody wanted him to star in, came calling, and the meeting put a face to the champion his whole gamble depended on.
A second clip, “Production Schedule,” stays on Stallone’s uphill fight to get his film made on the terms he demanded. It brings Ippolito’s Stallone back together with Kebbell and Byrne, and AnnaSophia Robb also appears as Sasha Czack, the woman who believed in him before anyone else did.
The clips continue a steady run of footage from the film on this site, following its first clip and second trailer last month and last week’s opening-day clips and first look as the movie reached its first theaters.
I Play Rocky is now playing in select theaters and adds more this Friday, November 13, before opening everywhere on November 20, timed to the 50th anniversary of the original Rocky. The anniversary was marked in Brooklyn last week with a Kings Theatre celebration where Sylvester Stallone joined Bill Conti as the composer conducted a live orchestra, with Ippolito and director Peter Farrelly in attendance. Farrelly directs the film from a script by Peter Gamble, with Matt Dillon, Kiki Seto and Tracy Letts rounding out the cast.