As one might expect, Paramount’s “80 for Brady” is doing well where NFL legend Tom Brady has legions of fans. On the flip side, it isn’t selling many tickets in Atlanta, where the film is probably a reminder of the city’s most bitter recent sports defeats.
“80 for Brady” stars Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno as a quartet of elderly New England Patriots fans who decide to travel to Houston in 2017 to watch Brady and their beloved team play against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI.
In that Super Bowl, the fifth of Brady’s seven championship triumphs, the Patriots were down 28-3 midway through the third quarter. But in a stunning comeback, Brady led New England to score 25 unanswered points, tying the game with a touchdown and two-point conversion with just under a minute left. With the game going to overtime, Brady led the offense down the field with the help of some Falcons penalties to win the game.
While the Patriots went on to win another Super Bowl two years later, the Falcons haven’t been back since. After making the playoffs the season following that championship choke, the Falcons have suffered five consecutive losing seasons. Since losing Super Bowl LI, Atlanta has had a record of 42-56.
So as one might expect, the box office performance of “80 for Brady,” which earned an estimated $12.5 million opening weekend, reflected America’s sports allegiances. According to data from Paramount, the list of cities that saw stronger ticket sales for the film compared to their usual market share were led by Boston and Tampa-St. Petersburg. That’s to be expected given Brady has huge fanbases in those cities thanks to his Super Bowl victories with the Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
But the list of cities where “80 for Brady” underperformed are also cities with football teams that have competed against Brady — and in many cases lost to him — in the Super Bowl and other major games during his career.
These include Los Angeles (Rams lost the Super Bowl to Brady in 2019), New York (the Giants beat Brady twice in the Super Bowl while the Jets were regularly defeated by the Patriots), Dallas (Brady has a 7-1 record against the Cowboys) and, of course, Atlanta.
Maybe Paramount should make a movie where Meryl Streep and a bunch of Hollywood legends play a group of elderly Atlanta Braves fans at the World Series.
