Draft Day a dud at the box office
Posted by Mike Florio on April 21, 2014
AP
After 49ers linebacker
Aldon Smith was arrested eight days ago for claiming he had a bomb with him in an airport security line, some of you said, “
Draft Day already is on DVD?”
Whether it’s dubbed a bomb or a dud, the movie isn’t doing very well.
According to BoxOffice.com,
Draft Day has made
less than $20 million through its first 10 days of release. After opening with a tepid $9.7 million, the film grossed a mere $5.9 million over Easter weekend. And with an estimated cost of $50 million, that makes it a major disappointment.
It also could make the league think twice before signing off on the use of its logos and team names and colors for a project that, while
paying the NFL on both ends, may not be something that the fans find worthy of the league’s involvement.
Football movies generally don’t do well, probably since fictionalized football isn’t much of a substitute for the real thing. They definitely won’t do well if they come off not as the real thing but as a sanitized infomercial for the proverbial shield.
It’ll be interesting to see whether other scripts will end up being dropped over the transom at 345 Park Avenue, and whether the NFL will have any interest in attaching itself to a story that won’t deliver the audience, even if luminaries like Kevin Costner and Ivan Reitman are involved.
If the league wants to really make a mark with a movie, they should get DeNiro and Scorcese to do a film version of
Playmakers instead.
.
