Months before it hits the cinema, the upcoming movie entitled "Concussion" lead by Will Smith has already paved its way to criticisms. Upon the release of the movie trailer, it seemed that it left a great impact to the audiences especially to one of the biggest sports enterprise worldwide, the NFL.
As Will Smith signed a contract with Sony Pictures Entertainment for the production of a sports drama film which was directed by Peter Landesman, they were aware of the storyline. Will Smith was not against the league but, he took the role for an interesting challenge.
According to a statement on Bleach Report, the NFL is terrified to watch the movie. The report also mentioned three points why the league hated the movie. First, NFL is concerned about the health and safety of the players. Second, they have been preparing for this for a long time. On the third point, they are concerned about the people's perceptions towards them.
In another article posted on CBCSports, NFL released a statement on Monday just after the publication of the official trailer. The NFL senior vice president of health and safety policy, Jeff Miller, recalls the issues from many years ago.
"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," NFL statement on the movie, Concussion.
However, the "Concussion" productions team is aware of the controversies they are facing. The New York Times said that hackers left some studio emails leading the Sony executives, the director and some representatives of Will Smith into an urgent meeting. They came up with a solution on how to prevent the hostility of NFL. They improved some scenes, deleted and changed the unfavorable scripts and turned the movie into a more like "whistle-blower" film, rather than disapproval to the football sports. In an interview, the movie director cited that they are not "making it [the story] up" to damage the league's reputation. Besides, they are preserving their credibility.
"There was never an instance where we compromised the storytelling to protect ourselves from the N.F.L.," Landesman said.
The film was based on a real-life story of a forensic pathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu, who discovered a brain disease among the football players. The plot focuses on the study of neurological disease from football stars who have endured from multiple and repetitive head trauma. Hence, it became a threat to the NFL.
The "Concussion (2015) Film" is scheduled to be released on December 2015.
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