Concussion Writer/Director Peter Landesman: "It does seem to me like the New York Times is working for the NFL"

The Concussion trailer came out Monday, and everyone cheered. Immediately, there was Oscar buzz. The movie’s release was slated for Christmas, which is when studios drop movies that harbor awards dreams.

But within 36 hours, the New York Times went after the movie, unearthing hacked emails that claimed Sony edited or removed “unflattering moments for the NFL.” It made Sony look gutless. Social media was full of, welp, no need to see it now.

Here’s where it gets interesting: the Times has really hammered the NFL for the last few years, doubling down on its concussion coverage. Nobody’s asking the Times to get out the pom-poms for football, but there’s an insatiable appetite for it in this country, and increasingly, the Times was losing veteran football writers to other outlets – the NFL Network, Sports Illustrated, etc – and coverage had waned.

So why would the Times go after the movie like this, now? Concussion writer/director Peter Landesman has a theory: “It does seem to me like the New York Times is working for the NFL.”

That’s what he told Deadline in a Q&A defending his film. It’s a bold claim – and probably a wrong one – but something is clearly incongruous given how the Times has covered the NFL in recent years. It seems like a film the paper would be championing, not hammering with a few hacked emails. If you’re satisfied with his answer here, you’ll probably see the movie.

"DEADLINE: The article cites discussions that were had by you, the studio and Will Smith’s reps took place on how to avoid antagonizing NFL by altering the script. It cites a “top lawyer” at the studio as having taken most of the bite out of the film. What did you cut out at the behest of the NFL, and how accurate is what I read in The New York Times? LANDESMAN: Sentence one, most important. I did nothing at the behest of the NFL, for the NFL, against the NFL. When I was writing and shooting the movie, the NFL wasn’t a single consideration, in any regard. Whether it was the portrayal of a character, or the story. In terms of what was cut or left out, any movie that’s about a true story, whether it’s Social Network, Zero Dark Thirty, or Moneyball to a slightly lesser degree, goes through a process of fair representation weighed against the power of the story you want to tell. There’s a constant dialogue going back and forth between the filmmakers and the producers. The one thing you don’t want to do is to be unfair or inaccurate. I had a very strong background in journalism, so it’s my instinct to try to be as fair and accurate as possible. We had scenes, dialogue coming out of the mouths of characters that simply didn’t happen. As a former journalist and now a filmmaker telling a story of this importance that has entered the zeitgeist in such a profound way, I wanted to simply tell a story in the most incisive and fair way possible. I can tell you this. The movie pulls no punches. In fact, anybody who see it would say exactly the opposite."

He says repeatedly there were no concessions in the film, there were no talks with the NFL, and that the film is authentic.

Solution? How about release another trailer, say, middle of the NFL season?