The film premiered in Los Angeles on April 7, 2014[2] and was released in the United States on April 11, 2014. It received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office failure grossing only $29 million against its $25 million budget. The film was Reitman's final directorial effort and Jim Brown's final acting role before their deaths in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
Plot
On the morning of the 2014 NFL Draft, Cleveland Brownsgeneral manager Sonny Weaver Jr. must decide how to use the seventh overall pick to improve the team, but he has other problems on his mind. His semi-secret girlfriend Ali Parker, the team's salary cap analyst, is pregnant, and the recent death of Sonny's father causes tension with his mother. Sonny had fired his father, a legendary coach for the Browns which he later admits was for his mother's sake because his father refused to retire even with failing health.
The Seattle Seahawks hold the first overall draft pick, and general manager Tom Michaels offers to trade it to Sonny; this would allow the Browns to draft highly-rated Wisconsinquarterback prospect Bo Callahan. Sonny initially declines, but under orders from team owner Anthony Molina to "make a splash," reluctantly makes the deal, trading away the Browns' first-round draft picks for the current season plus the next two years. The unexpected opportunity to obtain Callahan excites Browns fans, but splits the team's front office and players.
The trade goes public after a tweet by Ohio Statelinebacker Vontae Mack, who had been Sonny's original choice as first pick. Vontae tells Sonny to re-watch college game footage of him and Callahan playing against each other, with Mack coming out on top. Sonny begins to have doubts about Callahan's ability under pressure, and the Browns' investigations also bring Callahan's character into question.
When the draft begins that evening, Sonny agonises over the choice before drafting Vontae Mack at number one. Roger Goodell's announcement of the selection shocks the rest of the league, and disrupts many of their plans for their own picks. Molina is irate and flies back to Cleveland, intent on firing Sonny. Head coach Vince Penn is also incensed and threatens to resign.
Rumors spread about Callahan as other teams avoid selecting him. However, the Seahawks are still in contention to pick Callahan with the seventh pick, and Sonny senses an opportunity. He convinces the rookie general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars to trade him their pick at six in exchange for the Browns' second-round draft picks for that season plus the next two years. Sonny then calls Michaels; in return for passing on Callahan, Sonny demands his first-round picks back, along with punt returner David Putney. After fraught negotiations, the Seahawks seal the deal and choose Callahan at sixth pick. With his now-restored seventh pick, Sonny appeases Penn and Molina by selecting skilled running back Ray Jennings of Florida State, himself the son of a former Browns player.
Molina and his team celebrate an outstanding draft for the Browns. After the draft party, Sonny reconciles with his mother over his excellent draft performance and her soon-to-be first grandchild.
Draft Day writers, Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman, met while attending graduate school at New York University. They bonded over their love of both writing and football and joked around about the idea of creating something together. It wasn’t until years later, a mutual friend of theirs mentioned that despite not being a fan of football, she found watching the NFL Draft enjoyable. This led Joseph and Rothman to get into contact with the then general manager of the New York Jets, Mike Tannenbaum. They had a call with him and asked him many questions about what the environment of Draft Day was like for the managers. They quickly realized that despite their love of football, they had no idea the way that the Draft played out. They continued to think about a possible story they could tell and what characters or plots they could bring to a football movie. The two writers eventually wrote a very rushed first screenplay of Draft Day to submit to the Sundance Institute for a Screenwriter’s Lab in September of 2011. They were not accepted into the program, but were able to spend more time revising the script. [3]
After some revising, the writer duo were able to meet with a producer in LA and were told that the script was not good and would never be made. However, things began looking up for Draft Day when director Ivan Reitman contacted the writers and told them he wanted to make their movie. Paramount Pictures was originally set to produce the film, but dropped out, leaving the team at a loss of what to do. Reitman was convinced the movie could be a major production, and eventually got Oddlot Entertainment and Summit Entertainment on board.[3]
When the idea was first made public, the film was to be centered on the Buffalo Bills, but the studio subsequently changed it to the Cleveland Browns because of cheaper production costs in Ohio.[4]
Typically, screenwriters are not needed after the movie goes into production, however Joseph and Rothman were called to set nearly daily to meet with star Kevin Costner to go over the script and make any needed adjustments. Because of this, the script was often changed on the fly during the shooting days.[3]
The first day of filming took place during the day of the actual 2013 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall. Actual SportCenter casters Chris Berman and Mel Kiper, as well as the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell read lines for the movie right before the actual draft started.[3] Crowd reactions of fans at the actual 2013 NFL draft, as well as Cleveland Browns fans at local bars, were filmed. Cameos with real-life NFL figures such as league commissioner Roger Goodell and ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman were filmed before and after the draft took place. The rest of the film began filming on May 8, 2013.
2014 NFL Draft
As in the film, the Cleveland Browns made splashes at the draft, trading up to select quarterback Johnny Manziel with the 22nd pick. The team also made several deals, trading away their fourth pick to the Buffalo Bills for their ninth pick, as well as their 2015 first round pick. They later traded up to the eighth pick to draft Justin Gilbert. Finally, after watching Manziel drop farther than projected, they again traded up for the 22nd pick. Chris Berman, who played himself in the fictionalized draft, commented at the 2014 NFL draft that the events surrounding the Cleveland Browns were more exciting than the film. Unlike the film, the Browns selected the much-hyped Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, as opposed to passing on Bo Callahan, the fictionalized first pick favorite, although there are unflattering similarities between the two.
Marketing
The first poster and trailer for the film were released on December 23, 2013.[5]
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 60% of 160 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "It's perfectly pleasant for sports buffs and Costner fans, but overall, Draft Day lives down to its title by relying too heavily on the sort of by-the-numbers storytelling that only a statistician could love."[6]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[7]
Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper gave the film a "B", stating the film is "a sentimental, predictable, sometimes implausible but thoroughly entertaining, old-fashioned piece."
Ian Rapoport, an NFL Network Insider who held multiple brief cameos throughout the film, admitted that there are “plenty of things that aren’t exactly the way it goes” within the actual drafting process. And then goes on to praise the film on how NFL general managers “do talk about trades as they did during the movie,” and the honest discussions real people may have.[8]
On the contrary, Jack Hamilton of Slate was harshly critical. "The 'filmmaking' here consists of making sure the camera is pointed at people who are explaining the film's plot to one another, preferably while they are wearing logos and standing in front of more logos," he wrote. He suggested the NFL's involvement had made the film too upbeat. "[It] isn't so much a movie as a movielike infomercial for the kinder, gentler NFL ... In the wake of labor strife, off-field scandals, and the ongoing CTE concussions crisis, the NFL is doubling down on its fantasy of paternalism, and Draft Day is that fantasy's porn film."[9]
Former Green Bay Packers vice president Andrew Brandt criticized Draft Day as "lacking any true depiction of how an NFL team operates leading up to and during the draft", and less realistic about the business of sports than Jerry Maguire and Moneyball.[10] Riley McAtee, writing for The Ringer, noted that the Browns burdened themselves with an additional $7million in annual salary (as stated by a Seahawks executive in the film) to the fictional Mack – a player who would have been lucky to be drafted 15th overall, compounded by the fact that the Browns have also deprived the fictional Callahan of $7million in annual salary that he, not Mack, should be making: McAtee also notes the complete ineptness of the fictional executives of the Seahawks and Jaguars, making bad deal after bad deal, calling the latter the equivalent of "a kid who just wet his pants".[11]
The screenplay was the number one script on the 2012 Black List survey of unproduced screenplays. Writing for WhatCulture, David Hynes listed it as the 10th best script of the 2010s, arguing that it "follows one of the central tenets of screenwriting which is, 'thou shalt make things as hard as possible for your protagonist'". However, he felt that the film's execution failed to deliver on a script that was "as good as it gets."[12]
Release
Domestic box office
$28.8 million was grossed domestically (United States and Canada) over 37 weeks. Draft Day grossed around $9.8 million during the film’s opening weekend, representing 34% of the $29.8 million worldwide total,[13] against a budget of $25million.[14] It spent its first two weeks in the Top 10 at the domestic box office, before quickly dropping to the Top 58th nearing the end of its theatrical release cycle.[15]
Domestic video sales
Based on total market estimates collected by The Numbers, a film industry statistic site that utilizes data to provide real analytics, Draft Day is estimated to have earned $12.1 million in Domestic Video Sales.[13]
International box office
Close to $1 million was earned in international box offices, as Mexico and Venezuela are responsible for over half of these earnings. Even though American football is predominantly popular within the U.S., Vietnam released the movie on June 27, 2014, with just a few ticket sales amassing $878.[13]
Regarding sports in the United States, the NFL draft is one of the most celebrated and anticipated cultural phenomena. Steve Persall from the Tampa Bay Times, remains very opinionated about the shortcomings of the film, claiming that “[t]his movie doesn’t even trust the viewers to know where teams play” as each city is introduced with their relative mascot.[18] Other critics dissected and compared the less-than-realistic happenings within the film to their NFL Draft counterparts. For example, most of the info-gathering occurs on the final day of the draft when real NFL Draft decisions take months of research and planning. These details are simple to overlook during the production of a multi-million-dollar movie, as Ian Rapoport is recorded sharing his awareness of the film's inaccuracies stating that "Hollywood does its thing".[8] With the inclusion of an underdeveloped love story amid heavy sports talk, the film strays from capitalizing on die-hard NFL fans before the film is even released.
The film itself is also treated similarly to the NFL Draft, many scenes play like advertisements, with logo after logo being shoved in the viewer’s face, along with loud visuals that “give the viewer the impression they’re watching something truly important.”[19] The NFL Draft provides tens of millions of dollars to first picks,[20] but these large-scale stakes are difficult to convey in a two-hour film.
