User:Nlowe3/Draft Day

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 60% of 163 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." 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.

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.

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."

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. Riley McAtee, writing for The Ringer, noted that the Browns burdened themselves with an additional $7 million 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 $7 million 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".

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 was felt that the film's execution failed to deliver on a script that was "as good as it gets."

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. 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.

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.

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.

Digital Release

Prime Video, Apple TV+, and HBO Max are all streaming platforms for the film, as well as free-with-ads on any Roku streaming service.

Analysis

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. 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". 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.” The NFL Draft provides tens of millions of dollars to first picks, but these large-scale stakes are difficult to convey in a two-hour film.