‘I Play Rocky’, ‘Club Kid’, ‘Wild Horse Nine’ Charge Into A Stacked Indie Weekend — Specialty Preview

I Play Rocky steps into the ring in NY, LA and Philly for a weekend of contenders from Club Kid, Wild Horse Nine and Mouse to Jimmy and Godzilla Minus Zero and Academy runs for Everytime and Nusiance Bear. Screen counts range from one to wide. La Bola Negra from Netflix expands to its widest theater count at 473 locations.

Amazon MGM Studios’ I Play Rocky, the buzzy Sylvester Stallone biopic by Peter Farrelly, starts at seven locations in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Arriving in theaters nearly 50 years to the day after the original Rocky debuted in 1976, it expands in coming weeks, going wide 11/20.

Anthony Ippolito stars as a young Stallone in the true story of an unknown actor with an unshakable belief that he wasn’t just meant to write Rocky, he was meant to be Rocky Balboa. Facing rejection at every turn, Stallone bets everything on himself, holding the line on playing the lead against seemingly impossible odds. World premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, sits at 88% Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh. Deadline’s review calls it “sensational.” Winner of Audience Awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Cinéfest Sudbury and the Virginia Film Festival, and tied for the Overall Narrative Audience Choice Award at the Heartland Film Festival.

Ippolito received the Breakthrough Award at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival.

Written by Peter Gamble. Also stars AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, P.J. Byrne, Jay Duplass and Kiki Seto, featuring Matt Dillon with Stephan James and Tracy Letts.

A24’s Cannes-premiering father-son comedy Club Kid, Jordon Firstman’s directorial debut, opens in limited release across six theaters in New York and Los Angeles, expanding into Thanksgiving weekend. Firstman also stars as a hard-partying New York City club promoter whose whirlwind lifestyle is upended by the arrival of the 10-year-old son he never knew he had.

Club Kid is 100% Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh, see Deadline’s review. Gotham Award-nominated for Best Feature. The red-hot studio behind You Can See Everything built a groundswell among a young, diverse, LGBTQ audience, with parties from New York to London. It partnered with Resident Advisor, the platform for discovering electronic music, artists, and events, on community previews in cities across the U.S.

Searchlight Pictures’ comedy thriller Wild Horse Nine by writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Banshees of Inisherin) starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell debuts on 1,100 screens (grossed $900k in total previews. RT Certified Fresh at 95%, see Deadline review. Premiered at Venice where Malkovich took the Volpi Cup for Best Actor.

Shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, CIA agents Chris (Malkovich) and Lee (Rockwell) are dispatched from Santiago to Easter island by their bureau chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi). Amongst the Island’s iconic statues, and as the longtime partners wrestle with their dark pasts and present conspiracies, Chris’s newfound bond with a pair of rebellious students (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas) threatens to send everyone’s trip to this remote paradise sideways.

Independent Film Company opens coming-of-age drama Mouse in limited release in three theaters, IFC Center in NY, Laemmle Royal in LA, and Music Box in Chicago ahead of a nationwide expansion starting 11/13. Filmmakers Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (Ghostlight) are appearing with cast in Chicago for sold out Q&As.

World premiered in Berlin, Deadline review here. The Gotham Award Best Feature nominee had a robust festival run including a Woodstock Film Festival Best Narrative Feature win and a special career achievement honor for star Sophie Okonedo at the Chicago International Film Festival. The Tony winner will also receive the Supporting Actress Award for Film at the 9th Annual Critics Choice Celebration of Black Cinema & Television.

Set in 2002, best friends Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) and Callie (Chloe Coleman) are heading into their senior year of high school when their friendship is suddenly upended. A struggling Minnie forms a complicated relationship with Callie’s mother (Okonedo).

Sandra Wollner’s Everytime from 1-2 Special, winner of the top Jury Prize in Cannes Un Certain Regard and Germany’s Oscar entry for International Feature, starts an Academy run at Film at Lincoln Center in NY. A tragedy brings a mother, daughter, and teenage boy together. Stars Birgit Minichmayr, Tristán López, Lotte Shirin Keiling and Carla Hüttermann. The film has three Gotham Award nominations, for Best Director, Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay.

Mubi’s nature documentary Nuisance Bear by Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden’s also starts an Academy run, at the Laemmle Glendale in LA. Winner of the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition’s Grand Jury Prize, the film immerses viewers in the experience of a polar bear forced to navigate tourists, wildlife officers, and hunters as climate change pushes bears closer to human settlements.

Kino Lorber is out with Soul Patrol at the IFC Center director J.M. Harper on hand for Q&As. The winner of the Sundance documentary directing award unveils a hidden chapter of American military history in the Vietnam War’s first Black special ops team, an elite unit operating deep behind enemy lines. With unprecedented access to this once-secretive group of African American veterans, Harper reconstructs their journey using raw Super 8 footage, photographs and audio recordings from their personal archives.

Wide indies: GKids and Toho are opening Godzilla Minus Zero by Takashi Yamazaki on 3,254 screens. Early access started Tuesday with Imax-exclusive “Godzilla Day” screenings, simultaneous with the release date in its home territory of Japan, a first for the franchise. It will continue playing this week in Imax and other PLFs.

The follow-up to 2023 hit Godzilla Minus One picks up two years after, in 1949, and continues the story of the Shikishima family. Synopsis: War reduced Japan to zero, and Godzilla plunged it into minus. Two years have passed since then, and the country has faced agonizing struggles to achieve recovery and finally reclaim its daily life. Just as humanity managed to cling to a hard-won peace, a new threat strikes, crushing hope in an instant. There is no third time. Everything ends here.

Fathom Entertainment and Burns & Co. have Jimmy in 1,526 theaters, eyeing $2 million in box office for opening weekend. The Jimmy Stewart biopic by Aaron Burns starring KJ Apa is the unknown story of the Hollywood icon’s service in World War II, and how that service gave his iconic It’s A Wonderful Life the emotional impact that still resonates 80 years later. See Deadline review.

Written by Sam Juergens and Justin Strawhand. The ensemble cast includes Max Casella, Kara Killmer, Julian Works, Sarah Drew, Rob Riggle, Christopher McDonald, Jen Lilley, Jemma Donovan, Karolyn Grimes, with Neal McDonough and Jason Alexander. Jimmy Stewart’s daughter Kelly Stewart Harcourt is EP.

Producers set an unusual global military base buyout via the Timothy T. Day Foundation and Lockheed Martin with free opening night screenings for members of the military and families supported by the Air & Space Forces Aid Society and the Exchanges of the Army, Air Force and Navy. The film also raised $1 million to offer free tickets to veterans, first responders and their families through Vet Tix. A second round of tickets will be released just after opening weekend.