Rocky (1976)

Speaking of the Academy Awards, we end with, fittingly, an underdog story. That is true of Rocky Balboa, but also the movie Rocky. Sylvester Stallone would go on to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and the Rocky sequels would get so over-the-top Rocky basically ends the Cold War in the fourth one. Back in the mid-1970s, though, Stallone was a struggling actor. He wrote Rocky, hoping to earn a nice role for himself, the journey there was as notable as the Italian Stallion’s.

First, ABC bought it to turn it into a made-for-TV movie, but they wanted to hire writers for rewrites, so Stallone’s Lords of Flatbush co-star Henry Winkler used his Happy Days cache to manage to get them to sell him the rights back. Stallone took it to United Artists, which wanted to make it, but as a vehicle for an established star. Stallone and his agents said he would star or nobody would.

The studio said fine, but in turn only gave the film a budget of about $1 million. Cut to Rocky winning Best Picture for 1976 while making $225 million at the box office. Yo, Adrian: He made one of the most profitable movies of all time, and one of the most beloved.