It is Saturday, November 7, and The Nerds List Daily is celebrating a day fifty years in the making — hosted by Geeked, in ten minutes every morning.
"Rocky Turns Fifty" is live now. The original Rocky from 1976 is back on the big screen starting today, November 7, running through Tuesday, November 11, in a brand-new 4K restoration. Amazon MGM Studios is bringing it back through Fathom Entertainment in nearly 1,000 theaters across the country — not a dusty print dragged out of a vault, but the film cleaned up, sharpened, and ready to punch way above its weight all over again, half a century after it first did exactly that.
Every screening comes with extras that make this feel like an event rather than a rerun: an exclusive featurette with behind-the-scenes footage and a first look at I Play Rocky, the new movie about the making of Rocky. And at select theaters, you can pick up a limited-edition popcorn bucket shaped like the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps, with a little Rocky figure standing on top, fists in the air. Availability and purchase limits vary, so check with your local theater first — these things tend to sell out fast.
Philadelphia is going all out. The city has been running a celebration called Rocky Season since late September, with screenings, guided tours of filming locations, fitness challenges, and special events, all building toward December 3, the anniversary of the film's national release. Earlier this week, Rocky in Concert at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn reunited Sylvester Stallone with Oscar-winning composer Bill Conti for a conversation about the original film, before a live orchestra performed Conti's legendary score alongside a screening.
The story behind Rocky is just as much of an underdog story as the one on screen. In the spring of 1975, Stallone was a struggling actor in his late twenties who could barely get a part — so broke he ended up selling his dog. Then he watched a boxing match, went home, and wrote the screenplay for Rocky in about three and a half days. United Artists liked the script but wanted a name star in the lead — Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds were among the names tossed around — and Stallone was offered a six-figure payday to hand the script over and step aside. He said no, over and over, until they agreed to let him be Rocky Balboa. That refusal is the entire engine of this story.
The production itself was a small miracle: shot in just 28 days on a budget of about one million dollars, with a largely unknown cast — Stallone alongside Talia Shire as Adrian, Burt Young as Paulie, Burgess Meredith as the trainer Mickey, and Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed — directed by John G. Avildsen. The training montage, with Rocky running through the streets of Philadelphia before charging up the 72 stone steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was shot on a shoestring and became one of the most imitated sequences in film history. Bill Conti's score, especially "Gonna Fly Now," turned a morning run into a hymn about getting up and trying again.
Then the underdog won for real. Rocky opened in late 1976 and became the highest-grossing film of the year, earning about $225 million worldwide on that one-million-dollar budget. At the Academy Awards it earned ten nominations and won three, including Best Picture, Best Director for Avildsen, and Best Film Editing. Stallone became only the third person ever to be nominated for both acting and writing in the same year.
What makes Rocky endure is not the boxing. Rocky loses the fight — Apollo Creed wins on a split decision — and it does not matter, because Rocky went the distance. He lasted all fifteen rounds against the champion when nobody thought he would last one. The final scene is not about a belt. It is about Adrian, and about a man proving to himself that he is not a bum.
The legacy since then is staggering: a franchise that has grossed well over one billion dollars worldwide, from the original sequels through the Creed films; preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry; the museum steps known around the world simply as the Rocky Steps, with a bronze statue — originally built as a prop for Rocky III — that tourists line up to photograph every single day. Lines from the movie have entered everyday language: "Yo, Adrian" is pop-culture shorthand, and "going the distance" is something people say about everything from marathons to job hunts.
And Hollywood is not done telling this story. I Play Rocky, directed by Peter Farrelly, stars 27-year-old newcomer Anthony Ippolito as a young Sylvester Stallone. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, where it got a standing ovation, opened in limited release on November 6, and expands nationwide on November 20. Ippolito trained for a year and a half for the role, and Stallone himself has now seen the film and loved it. The cast includes Stephan James as Carl Weathers, Kiki Seto as Talia Shire, AnnaSophia Robb as Stallone's first wife Sasha Czack, and Matt Dillon as Stallone's father.
If Rocky is not your speed this weekend, the rest of the marquee has options: The Cat in the Hat, the new animated Dr. Seuss movie with Bill Hader voicing the Cat, opened wide on November 6; Drummer Boy, an epic musical about two brothers on opposite sides of the American Revolutionary War, also opened wide on November 6; and Jimmy, the biographical drama about Jimmy Stewart's transformation from Oscar winner to combat pilot in World War II, is in theaters now.
Geeked's recommendation is simple: if Rocky is playing anywhere near you between today and Tuesday, go. Take someone who has never seen it, or someone who has seen it fifty times. There is something about watching an underdog story with a crowd that you cannot get on your couch. And if you miss the theatrical run, MGM is also releasing new 4K sets of Rocky on December 15, just in time for the holidays. Tomorrow, the show heads to Japan for a very different kind of classic, as Ghost in the Shell returns in 4K.
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