Henry Winkler Recalls Rescuing Rocky Script from Television Fate

Henry Winkler reveals how he helped Sylvester Stallone reclaim the Rocky script from ABC, preventing the billion-dollar franchise from being a made-for-TV movie.

By: AXL Media

Published: Mar 21, 2026, 6:01 AM EDT

Source: People

The Sunset Boulevard Connection

The friendship between Winkler and Stallone dates back to the mid-1970s. Winkler recounted a day when Stallone, an unknown actor at the time, called him after his car broke down on Sunset Boulevard. Winkler assisted Stallone, his wife Sasha, and their Bullmastiff, Butkus, in relocating to a new apartment. During this period of financial desperation—where Stallone famously had to sell his dog because he couldn't afford pet food—he handed Winkler a script about an Italian-American boxer. Winkler, then reaching peak fame as "The Fonz" on Happy Days, leveraged his influence to sell the project to ABC.

Preventing the Television Rewrite

The deal with ABC nearly altered film history. According to Winkler, once the network acquired the script, they intended to have professional writers rework Stallone's original draft. Recognizing that Stallone’s vision was being compromised, Winkler took a rare professional gamble.

"I said, ‘ABC, I’m giving you back the money, I need that script back,’ and I gave it back to him, and it became Rocky," Winkler told host Sway Calloway. "And that is the honest truth."

Stallone’s Persistence and the Million-Dollar Gamble