Stallone fought a studio to play Rocky. Now he's telling young actors to surrender to AI
The man whose origin story is refusing to hand his role to someone else says the next generation shouldn't bother fighting for theirs.
In 1976, a broke Sylvester Stallone turned down offer after offer for his Rocky script because the studio wanted a star in the lead, and he refused to sell unless the star was him. Fifty years later, he went on The Overlap — Gary Neville and Roy Keane's show — and delivered the opposite advice about AI, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter:
"It's an avalanche. It's just out of our control. If you don't go with it, you will be trampled by it."
— Sylvester Stallone, on The Overlap
He knows how it sounds. "I get in trouble for this [but] AI is here to stay," he said in the same conversation, per Far Out, pointing to actors already licensing their likenesses: "People are now selling their images, and eventually, there are 20 Elvis avatars."
He's been practicing what he preaches
This isn't an abstract position. Stallone pitched Lionsgate on an AI-de-aged young John Rambo, with himself walking through Saigon at 18 — "Everyone thought I was crazy," he told The Playlist last year. The studio made the young-Rambo movie anyway, with Noah Centineo in the role instead of an algorithmic Stallone.
The advice gets personal, too. His daughter Scarlet Rose is pursuing acting, and Stallone says he's steered her toward considering other avenues — gaming among them — because of what AI could do to young actors starting out. That's the part that stings: he concedes the creative community is morally right, and recommends retreat anyway.
SAG-AFTRA spent 118 days on strike in 2023 to win AI protections for actors. Rocky's advice to a young actress in 2026 is to look at the games industry.
The audience isn't ready to be trampled
Fans, notably, are making the anti-AI argument with Stallone's own career. Under Entertainment Tonight's video, the top comment reads: "Some characters just can't be replaced by different actors. Like Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, you can't have Rambo without Stallone" (28 upvotes). Another put it more bluntly: "I rather have a old man rambo while we still have stalone" (12 upvotes).
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Which is the tension he can't advise his way out of. His whole legend rests on the idea that the person is not replaceable by a more convenient casting choice — and the avalanche he's telling everyone to ride is built to prove the opposite.
Previously we wrote: Jon Hamm's American Hostage is a true story — and the real ending changed American law