The upcoming release may become Hollywood’s first hit about limb difference.
Start with Jennifer Lopez, one of the world’s most bankable actors. Surround her with a cast of critically acclaimed, award-winning performers. Hire a perennial Oscar nominee to direct. And get one of the film industry’s buzziest production companies to shepherd the project.
That sounds like the formula for a big-budget blockbuster, not an intense coming-of-age drama about a college athlete with congenital limb difference. But Hollywood’s pulling out all the stops for Unstoppable. Based on the true story of college wrestling champ Anthony Robles, the film goes into wide release next month, when holiday moviegoers pack the theaters and Oscar hopefuls jockey for attention.
It’s not the first true story about limb difference to attract A-list talent—Jake Gyllenhaal played bombing survivor Jeff Bauman in 2017’s Stronger. But that movie, which focused heavily on trauma and recovery, flopped at the box office. Unstoppable addresses issues like social marginalization and family dysfunction, which might broaden its appeal.
“This project has been a long process and an amazing journey,” says the 36-year-old Robles, who won an NCAA title in 2011 during his senior year at Arizona State. “There were times where I wondered if this would ever become a reality. It’s still crazy to me that it is a reality.”
Unstoppable drew critical praise this fall after premiering in a coveted opening-night slot at the Toronto International Film Festival. Variety lauded it as “the rare sports crowd-pleaser you can believe in,” adding, “The compelling quality of Unstoppable is that it never makes beating the odds—at home, or in the wrestling arena—look too easy.” Deadline noted that “you really can’t compare it to anything that has come before, either in terms of what the main subject has achieved in athletics or the obstacles he had to overcome at home.” And The Hollywood Reporter deemed Unstoppable “very moving” and said that “Jharrel Jerome, a gifted Emmy winner for When They See Us, does a particularly fine job playing Robles, with the aid of some first-rate visual effects.”
Unstoppable is scheduled for theatrical release on December 6 by Amazon MGM Studios, with its streaming debut early in 2025. Amplitude connected with Robles to learn how his story grew from a small passion project into a major production. Here are nine things we learned:
1 Robles worked hard to keep the narrative from becoming Hollywoodized.
The movie is based on Robles’s autobiography, Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated, which was published more than a decade ago. “I had offers at that time from production companies,” he recalls. “But my representatives advised me, ‘If you sign off, you will have little control over the story and how it’s told.’ It was very important to me to hold on to the integrity of the story and the message. I didn’t want them to twist my mom’s story or put a negative spotlight on my stepfather. I didn’t want to end up with a story that’s unrecognizable to me.” He worked with his own creative team to generate the first draft of the screenplay.
2 He doesn’t consider Unstoppable a disability movie or a sports movie.
“The story isn’t just me competing on a wrestling mat,” he says. “I wrestled through my life as well. My mom was a single parent, 16 years old when she had me. I had a stepfather who wasn’t the best role model.” There were money problems, too, but there were also unshakable bonds of love that held the family together. Those are the themes Robles hopes audiences will identify with. “There are a lot of challenges that can break people. It can be a physical thing. It can be mental. It can be something going on in the world. During those times when you’re broken and in a valley, if you can find the courage to just take one step, to get back up—that’s what being human is all about.”
3 Ben Affleck got involved during production of a film about Michael Jordan.
Affleck learned about Unstoppable while collaborating with Oscar-winning film editor William Goldenberg on Air, the 2023 film about the NBA legend’s groundbreaking partnership with Nike. “They were talking about their next projects and what they’re passionate about,” Robles explains, “and Billy mentioned Unstoppable. He’d read the script and fell in love with it, so he was on board to be the director early on.” Lopez, who was then Affleck’s wife, got excited about playing Robles’s mother, Judy. Affleck’s company closed the deal to make Unstoppable in early 2023, just as Air was hitting the theaters.
4 Robles appears in the movie as a stunt double.
He doesn’t mind that a nondisabled actor, Jharrel Jerome, plays him in Unstoppable. While authentic casting is an admirable ideal, there just aren’t many 20-something Afro-Latino actors who are missing their entire right leg, have a wrestler’s physique, and possess the theatrical chops to portray the range of emotions the role demanded. Jerome learned to represent Robles’s one-legged posture, center of gravity, and crutch-aided gait, but he couldn’t convincingly execute certain wrestling maneuvers like a one-legged athlete. Robles stepped in for those scenes, and Goldenberg—an award-winning film editor, don’t forget—artfully cut the footage together. Free tub of popcorn for any eagle-eyed viewers who can ID which frames depict the real Robles.
5 Jerome was already a friend before he was cast to play Robles.
“We met before COVID, and he came out here [to Arizona] to hang out with me and my family. So he got to know me in my day-to-day life. He got to see how I interact with people, and how people look at me out in public. We had a lot of natural conversations about how I stay motivated, my weaknesses, my fears. Instead of some actor getting to know me for a project and asking me a lot of intimate questions, it grew organically over time.”
6 A key figure from Robles’ life got excluded from the final script.
It pains Robles that there wasn’t room in the screenplay for high school wrestling teammate Chris Frieje. “There’s so many special people in my life, but you can’t fit all of them into two hours,” he says. “Chris showed me no mercy, and that’s one thing I loved about him. A lot of people treated me differently [because of my limb difference], but Chris treated me just like anyone else—and he held me just as accountable as anyone else. He taught me to focus on who you are, not on what you might be lacking. Maybe you’re not the tallest guy, maybe you’re not the strongest or fastest, and maybe you don’t have both legs. But what matters is what you do with what you have.”
7 He hopes his students will learn a thing or two from Unstoppable.
Robles now coaches wrestling at Hamilton High School in suburban Phoenix, and he’s trying to build a culture that reflects his values. “We promote the mentality that this isn’t just about being successful on a mat. It’s about being successful in your life. For a lot of these kids, the motivation isn’t to win a national championship. They just want to do something that gives them confidence and gets them an outlet away from things that are stressful. I’m asking teachers to send me the kids who end up in trouble, who find themselves in detention for fighting or interrupting class. I think wrestling can teach them a lot, and I think I can teach them a lot about controlling your anger and frustrations, and channeling those negative things to do something positive with your life.”
8 Robles is still getting comfortable with being viewed as an inspiration.
Before he won his NCAA title, he had mixed feelings when someone would single him out as a role model. “I felt like I hadn’t done anything to deserve it,” he says. “I was still fighting to prove something and show everybody they were wrong [about me]. But now I’ve reached the point in my life where I can stop trying to prove anything. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. If hearing my story helps other people—if it inspires them—that’s my way of giving back and saying thank you to all the people who helped me in my life.”
9 The pivotal scenes in Unstoppable show Robles getting a thorough butt-whuppin’.
“One of my trainers used to say, ‘If you are unchallenged, then you are unchanged.’ When you get challenged, that’s an opportunity to find the puzzle piece you’re missing and plug it in. You might have to take three or four losses before it starts making sense, but you have to have faith that sooner or later you’ll figure it out. That’s very much like a wrestling match. When you’re getting your face smashed into the mat, your coach can’t call a timeout and sub in a teammate. You’re the one who has to wrestle that match. I want people to realize that when they’re in that dark moment, they just need to find that little sense of hope and keep fighting.”
Read more of Amplitude‘s conversation with Anthony Robles in our newsletter.
