“Concussion,” Sony’s film about degenerative brain disease in professional football players, was altered in order to soften the potential blow to the NFL, the New York Times reports.
According to dozens of emails released in the Sony hack, Sony executives emailed back and forth with director Peter Landesman and with Smith’s team to discuss how they could avoid antagonizing the NFL with the film, despite the studio having no major ties to the league.
There was a way that they could have avoided any hostile feelings from the NFL. Instead of making Will Smith’s character a professional football player in the NFL, they could have made him a CFL player.
The Canadian Football League has hundreds of American players who come to the CFL. Some stay on, realizing that the dream of playing is just as alive for them in the smaller market CFL cities as it is in the NFL. Others use the CFL as a spring board to get back into the CFL, and many big names in the NFL made their start in the CFL (Doug Flutie, Warren Moon).
Also, the CFL has been addressing the issue of concussions and degenerative disease in professional football players. You even have former players like Matt Dunnigan, a former quarterback for Edmonton, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Toronto, British Columbia and Birmingham (during the CFL’s American experiment), coming forward and talking about the need to better protect players. Dunnigan himself has suffered from concussions and it has affected his memory, balance, and speech.
(via salon)
