‘I Play Rocky’s Anthony Ippolito Lands At CAA

EXCLUSIVE: On the heels of a knockout trailer for I Play Rocky, Anthony Ippolito has signed with CAA.

I Play Rocky chronicles the underdog backstory behind the ultimate underdog movie, Rocky. Ippolito plays the young Sylvester Stallone, who was so in need of cash that he sold his dog Butkus while holding out on his Rocky script until a backer relented to Stallone playing the lead role of Philly fighter Rocky Balboa. He persuaded Butkus’ new owner to sell the pooch back to him.

Rocky won Best Picture over this killer category of films: All The President’s Men, Network, Taxi Driver and Bound For Glory.

Ippolito, who you might know from his showy turn as Al Pacino opposite Miles Teller in the making of The Godfather series The Offer, is something of an underdog story himself. Upon hearing about the efforts to cast a young actor to play Stallone in the making of Rocky, the Long Island-based Ippolito took matters into his own hands. He self-taped his own audition, sent it in unsolicited, and fought to get it to the film’s producers and director Peter Farrelly.

RELATED: ‘Rocky’ At 50: Sylvester Stallone Recalls Rising Up To The Challenge Of His Rivals At The Oscars: “People Were Looking For Something Life-Affirming”

This is his first leading feature role, but Ippolito won’t have trouble getting in any rooms shortly, after the film hits the fall festivals starting with Toronto in September. Buzz has been building on the actor, and the Amazon MGM Studios drama, well before its theatrical release November 13 (limited, with a wide release November 20). The pitch-perfect trailer certainly helped this week. I Play Rocky could be an Oscar bait movie, coming 50 years after the original made Stallone a superstar.

Ippolito signed with CAA after meeting the major agencies over the past week.

Aside from the small role as Pacino, Ippolito first broke out as George Wright in Grand Army and appeared in Purple Hearts, both for Netflix. He started out playing the young version of Adam Sandler’s character in Pixels.

Ippolito is repped by Untitled, the Lede Company and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols.

Here’s the trailer again: