London Film Festival’s Surprise Movie Is… ‘I Play Rocky’

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Anthony Ippolito stars as Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky

The audience guessing game at the BFI London Film Festival is officially over.

The fest’s 2026 surprise film, screening at the British capital’s Royal Festival Hall — as has become tradition — is Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky with up-and-coming star Anthony Ippolito. Ippolito plays Sylvester Stallone in Peter Farrelly’s movie, which follows the tumultuous production of the 1976 boxing film that won three Oscars, including best picture.

Farrelly even appeared on stage before the screening on Friday evening, providing a special treat for those in attendance. “The script was sent to me by Peter Gamble,” said the filmmaker. “I thought I knew the story, but I read the script and I realized there was so much I didn’t know about it. […] But this story mirrors Rocky. It’s so similar. It’s unbelievable. Except I thought, ‘This could be even better, because Rocky is fiction, and this is reality,'” continued Farrelly.

He joked about the short search for Stallone: “I could do a TED Talk about Anthony Ippolito. This kid is ridiculous. When I got the script again, [which] is a masterpiece from Peter Gamble… We were talking about doing a nationwide search for Stallone.” But before they began that hunt, Farrelly got a tape from his casting director. “He said some kid’s sent him a tape… He tracked down the script and shot three scenes in his grandmother’s basement out of Long Island.” Farrelly looked at Ippolito’s audition and thought: “‘That’s it.’ We never looked past him.”

I Play Rocky also stars Matt Dillon, AnnaSophia Robb, P.J. Byrne, Toby Kebbell, Tracy Letts, Jay Duplass and Kiki Seto, and is produced by Peter Farrelly, who also directs; Christian Baha, Toby Emmerich, Paul Currie and Michele Weiss also produce.

THR‘s chief film critic David Rooney says Ippolito “holds the movie together” in his review out of TIFF earlier this year. “[He] nails the garbled, rumbling diction, hangdog expression and hulking physicality of Stallone while never losing sight of his insecurities at this unproven point in his career,” wrote Rooney. “I Play Rocky repurposes most of its emotional uplift from the movie within the movie, but anyone with fond memories of the boxing drama — perhaps those who first saw it back in the day most of all — will feel a surge of elation from the moment Bill Conti’s theme music is folded in.”

Last year, Tuner, starring Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman, was the surprise movie at LFF. Director Daniel Roher and London hometown star Woodall took to the stage to the delight of the crowd.

Other past LFF surprise films have included Saturday Night, Ferrari, The Menu and C’mon C’mon.

The 70^th edition of the BFI London Film Festival runs through Sunday, Oct. 18. Elsinore, starring Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman, opened the fest, while Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut will close it.