The Strange Super Bowl Rise of Sylvester Stallone, Paramount+ Reality Series
Sylvester Stallone has attempted nearly every action stunt in his superstar career.
But in the Paramount + Super Bowl spot titled “Stallone Face,” the action icon catches a massive stone nose, modeled after his own., climb on a giant sculpted Sylvester Stallone head in “Paramount Mountain”.
“It was only a matter of time before someone climbed on my nose,” Stallone, 76, told USA TODAY of the ad, which was unveiled Thursday. “It’s about as big as Everest. So it was unavoidable. Luckily I didn’t have sinus that day.”
Paramount stars such as Dora the Explorer, “Star Trek: Discovery” Capt. Pike (Anson Mount) and “Reno 911” Lt. Dangle (Thomas Lennon) join Stallone’s daughters Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet at base camp to watch the surreal scale of Stallone’s solo Mount Rushmore.
The one-minute Super Spot (list price: $7 million for 30 seconds, according to Ad Age) is part of Paramount+ Mountain of Entertainment’s original marketing campaign.
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“It’s funny, but I thought nothing could top this statue of my dad,” says Sophia, 26, referring to the famous 10-foot Rocky statue that’s still a tourist attraction in Philadelphia. “Now it turns out that a mountain can top him. What’s better than a mountain?”
On location, however, his daughters are less than impressed, dismissing the rise and eventual fall with the words “He does that.”
His daughters’ eye rolling is representative of Stallone family life, also explored in “The Family Stallone,” an eight-episode reality series starring Stallone, his wife Jennifer Flavin, and their three daughters coming to Paramount. + this spring.
“Working with my father is almost like working with a little brother. So we constantly roll our eyes at him,” explains Sixtine, 24. and now he is falling. He says crazy things. He does crazy things. So it’s not far from normal life.”
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Just before his family’s Zoom call on Wednesday to discuss the publicity, Stallone caught Sistine’s eye over breakfast by pointing to “a very handsome young man” nearby.
“I thought maybe she should meet him,” Stallone says. “I got in big trouble.”
“Yeah, he basically pointed at this guy and said, ‘Is this the one you find sexy? “,” Sistine said. “I wanted to crawl under the table.”
For the Paramount spot, Stallone climbed for hours on a nondescript face built on a raised platform, but relied on “CGI magic” to turn the mountain into his growling lookalike.
“That commercial was more complicated than shooting most movies, and more expensive. They did it all,” he says.
Stallone has already earned his spot on Paramount Mountain playing horribly transplanted New York City Mob capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi in the Paramount+ drama “Tulsa King.”
Youngest daughter and aspiring actress Scarlet, 20, also appeared as Manfredi Pilot’s horse keeper on the show, which wrapped its first season in January.
“It was amazing, I had never done television before,” says Scarlet. “I know, I’ll never have that kind of opportunity to do something with him again. But it was a great bonding moment.”
“Wait, wait a minute, you haven’t been fired, Scarlet,” Stallone says, hinting at a Season 2 return for her character. “What makes you think you won’t come back?” Someone has to take care of Pilot.
Flavin, who will be conspicuously absent from the Paramount+ family commercial, will star in “Family Stallone” after filing for divorce (and reconciling) last year. When asked why she was absent from the venue, Stallone simply turned the Zoom camera to his wife, who was sitting nearby on the couch.
“It’s a big mountain,” Flavin said. “But there was no place there for the biggest mouth, and the one who controls everything. And that’s me.”
USA Today
