The NFL can’t be happy about the upcoming Will Smith movie, “Concussion,” in which he plays a real-life doctor who strove to shine a light on the connection between incidents of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the violence in football. However, as a New York Times report detailed Tuesday, executives at Sony Pictures, which made the film, softened parts of their story to avoid the full wrath of the country’s most popular — and powerful — sports league.
[See Will Smith take on the NFL in ‘Concussion’ trailer]
The Times searched through e-mails made public from last year’s massive hack of Sony, and it found discussions about making the movie more of a drama about a whistleblower, in this case Bennet Omalu, a Nigeria-born neuropathologist, rather than a depiction of the NFL as a huge villain. From the Times’ report:
“Will is not anti football (nor is the movie) and isn’t planning to be a spokesman for what football should be or shouldn’t be but rather is an actor taking on an exciting challenge,” Dwight Caines, the president of domestic marketing at Sony Pictures, wrote in an email to three top studio executives about how to position the movie. “We’ll develop messaging with the help of N.F.L. consultant to ensure that we are telling a dramatic story and not kicking the hornet’s nest.” …
Another email noted that some “unflattering moments for the N.F.L.” were deleted or changed, while in another correspondence, a top Sony lawyer is said to have taken “most of the bite” out of the film “for legal reasons with the N.F.L. and that it was not a balance issue.” Other emails discuss an aborted effort to reach out to the N.F.L. …
In other emails, Sony executives discussed how to make the movie appear less threatening. In several emails they said that press materials should note that Mr. Smith likes football and one of his sons played the game. In another email, Hannah Minghella, a top executive, suggested that “rather than portray the N.F.L. as one corrupt organization can we identify the individuals within the N.F.L. who were guilty of denying/covering up the truth.”
The Times built off the work of a Redditor called dynamicsearchguy, who initially searched through a database of Sony’s e-mails material at WikiLeaks. That Internet sleuth posted a number of the e-mails he uncovered, detailing Sony executives’ concern about the NFL’s reaction to their movie, about three months ago.
The movie’s director, Peter Landesman, had this to say to the Times:
“We’re just being smart because any large corporation will design a response to something it considers to be a threat to its existence. We don’t want to give the NFL a toehold to say, ‘They are making it up,’ and damage the credibility of the movie.”
Landesman subsequently made this statement to the Associated Press:
“We always intended to make an entertaining, hard-hitting film about Dr. Omalu’s David-and-Goliath story, which played out like a Hollywood thriller.
“Anyone who sees the movie will know that it never once compromises the integrity and the power of the real story.”
As noted by the Times, the NFL has flexed its muscle in the past, most notably in apparently convincing ESPN to drop its involvement in a documentary about football and brain injuries called “League of Denial.” That documentary was televised by PBS on “Frontline.”
In 2004, ESPN canceled “Playmakers,” a popular drama series about professional football players, following complaints from the NFL. “Many considerations went into this decision, not the least of which was the reaction from a longtime and valued partner,” ESPN VP of programming and production Mark Shapiro said at the time.
On Monday, Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president of health and safety policy, released this statement (via Huffington Post):
“We are encouraged by the ongoing focus on the critical issue of player health and safety. We have no higher priority. We all know more about this issue than we did 10 or 20 years ago. As we continue to learn more, we apply those learnings to make our game and players safer.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ncussion-movies-unflattering-moments-for-nfl/
[See Will Smith take on the NFL in ‘Concussion’ trailer]
The Times searched through e-mails made public from last year’s massive hack of Sony, and it found discussions about making the movie more of a drama about a whistleblower, in this case Bennet Omalu, a Nigeria-born neuropathologist, rather than a depiction of the NFL as a huge villain. From the Times’ report:
“Will is not anti football (nor is the movie) and isn’t planning to be a spokesman for what football should be or shouldn’t be but rather is an actor taking on an exciting challenge,” Dwight Caines, the president of domestic marketing at Sony Pictures, wrote in an email to three top studio executives about how to position the movie. “We’ll develop messaging with the help of N.F.L. consultant to ensure that we are telling a dramatic story and not kicking the hornet’s nest.” …
Another email noted that some “unflattering moments for the N.F.L.” were deleted or changed, while in another correspondence, a top Sony lawyer is said to have taken “most of the bite” out of the film “for legal reasons with the N.F.L. and that it was not a balance issue.” Other emails discuss an aborted effort to reach out to the N.F.L. …
In other emails, Sony executives discussed how to make the movie appear less threatening. In several emails they said that press materials should note that Mr. Smith likes football and one of his sons played the game. In another email, Hannah Minghella, a top executive, suggested that “rather than portray the N.F.L. as one corrupt organization can we identify the individuals within the N.F.L. who were guilty of denying/covering up the truth.”
The Times built off the work of a Redditor called dynamicsearchguy, who initially searched through a database of Sony’s e-mails material at WikiLeaks. That Internet sleuth posted a number of the e-mails he uncovered, detailing Sony executives’ concern about the NFL’s reaction to their movie, about three months ago.
The movie’s director, Peter Landesman, had this to say to the Times:
“We’re just being smart because any large corporation will design a response to something it considers to be a threat to its existence. We don’t want to give the NFL a toehold to say, ‘They are making it up,’ and damage the credibility of the movie.”
Landesman subsequently made this statement to the Associated Press:
“We always intended to make an entertaining, hard-hitting film about Dr. Omalu’s David-and-Goliath story, which played out like a Hollywood thriller.
“Anyone who sees the movie will know that it never once compromises the integrity and the power of the real story.”
As noted by the Times, the NFL has flexed its muscle in the past, most notably in apparently convincing ESPN to drop its involvement in a documentary about football and brain injuries called “League of Denial.” That documentary was televised by PBS on “Frontline.”
In 2004, ESPN canceled “Playmakers,” a popular drama series about professional football players, following complaints from the NFL. “Many considerations went into this decision, not the least of which was the reaction from a longtime and valued partner,” ESPN VP of programming and production Mark Shapiro said at the time.
On Monday, Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president of health and safety policy, released this statement (via Huffington Post):
“We are encouraged by the ongoing focus on the critical issue of player health and safety. We have no higher priority. We all know more about this issue than we did 10 or 20 years ago. As we continue to learn more, we apply those learnings to make our game and players safer.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ncussion-movies-unflattering-moments-for-nfl/
