Sylvester Stallone beats cash: “I want my rights to Rocky”

The story goes back 46 years. It was 1976, when a film about boxing was released in American theaters (and the following year around the world), starring a semi-unknown Italian-American actor. The movie was Rocky and the protagonist Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, but we have all learned to know how Sylvester Stallone, or more familiarly Sly.

A three billion dollar saga

Made in just twenty-eight days with a budget of 1.1 million dollars, it grossed 225 at the box office giving life to a very successful series consisting of five sequels (Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V e Rocky Balboa) e due spin-off (Creed – Born to fight e Creed II). Overall the whole saga it grossed nearly three billion dollars (2,965,471,850 to be exact), placing it in 12th place in the ranking of the highest grossing of the sagas of the cinema. And how much went into Stallone’s pockets?

Three Oscars

The actor was paid $ 75,000 in 1976 for writing the screenplay and starring in Rocky, as well as winning two nominations for Best Actor and Best Screenwriter and making him the third man in film history after. Charlie Chaplin e Orson Welles to receive an Oscar nomination for both screenwriter and actor for the same film. In short, a lot of glory, while the film, in addition to receipts, obtained three statuettes: including the one for best film and best director, to the satisfaction of producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, director John G. Avildsen and editors Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad. But it doesn’t stop there.

At the top of the movies

In 1998 the American Film Institute placed the first Rocky in seventy-eighth place in the ranking of the best one hundred US films of all time, while ten years later, in the updated list, it rose to fifty-seventh place; in 2006 it was chosen for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress and in August 2015 the magazine Rolling Stone put it in second place in the ranking of the best sports films in the history of cinema.

Stallone beats cash

Now Stallone, just 76 years old (he celebrated them last July 6), Stallone has decided to reopen the chapter linked to images, stories and characters from the saga of the legendary boxer and the subsequent Creed series. Apart from the remuneration received as a protagonist, screenwriter and director, the actor does not perceive any income linked to the exploitation of the world created by himself. Stallone has made a public appeal to the producer Irwin Winkler93, who has always owned the copyright on Rocky.

video">

Tourist stallion in Rome jokes in a bar: “The secret of my strength? Ice cream”

video">

–

–

The actor, as mentioned, at the time was paid 75 thousand, plus a percentage of the proceeds that made him accrue 2.5 million dollars, a not bad sum, given that at the time he was practically broke, and did not ask for anything. more because “there was some sort of code of conduct in this business at that time and you weren’t going to ruffle the feathers of the goose that laid the golden eggs,” he said in an interview a few years ago. In short, he has always felt that he was paid fairly, but now he would like to leave something of what he did to the family.

The appeal on Instagram

On Instagram Sylvester Stallone posted a portrait of Irwin Winkler which depicts him with the body of a snake and a sword-shaped tongue. A painting created by the same actor who has dabbled in painting for years. “A long portrait of the great Rocky / Credd producer, Irwin Winkler, by one of the greatest artists in the country … – Stallone wrote in the post – Then, after controlling Rocky for more than 47 years, and now Creed, I’d really like to receive at least “what’s left of my rights” before they are passed on only to your children. I think it would be a fair gesture from this 93-year-old gentleman, right? It’s a painful matter that eats my soul, because I want leave something Rocky to my kids, even if it’s always nice to hear words from loyal fans. “

–