How The FanDuel Super Bowl Commercial With Carl Weathers Changed After His Death
Proceedings at the 2024 Super Bowl took a turn for the emotional when sports betting organization FanDuel released a commercial featuring a certain recently-deceased movie legend. Indeed, right off the heels of football star Rob Gronkowski's ceremonial field goal attempt — which he notably missed — the company aired a follow-up ad with a reaction to the outcome from none other than the late "Rocky" actor Carl Weathers.
The ad, which features a recap of Gronkowski's missed kick, sees Weathers watching the event on TV and remarking: "You gave us your all, Gronk." The promo ends with a small sequence with Gronkowski and Weathers together with the on-screen message that reads, "Thank you, Carl — 1948 – 2024." It's a sweet little tribute to the performer, but quite a lot of work on FanDuel's part went into retooling the ad in the wake of Weathers' death.
In a pre-Super Bowl interview with Variety, FanDuel Executive Vice President of Marketing Andrew Sneyd told the outlet that the company elected to completely retool the commercial to better honor Weathers — after securing the blessing of his family members to retain his appearance. "We have been viewing edits through tears," Sneyd said. "We really enjoyed the short time we had to work with him. He's a wonderful man and he genuinely is an inspiration and had such a positive outlook on the world. We want to make sure we try to meet this moment with the respect it deserves."
The original FanDuel ads with Carl Weathers were apparently quite different
In the end, the finished FanDuel Super Bowl ad with Carl Weathers turned out to be quite different from the versions that were originally planned for release prior to his death. Nonetheless, as Andrew Sneyd outlined in his interview with Variety, the premise of the ad remained mostly intact. "The live event itself carries forward and as is," he explained. "Rob will kick the field goal and he will be even more inspired to make it. He really enjoyed meeting Carl and found him to be such an optimistic and energetic person."
What changed was mostly the reaction to Rob Gronkowski's kick. Two versions of the ad were planned based on the possible outcomes, but both were ultimately scrapped. "We had built a master," Sneyd said. "One is an edit if he makes the kick and we have an edit if he misses. That content we had in those masters wouldn't be appropriate for us to do any more. Since the news of Carl's passing came, we have been working with editors to help us get back to something that does make sense."
Due to the circumstances, it seems that some of the content filmed for what may turn out to be Weathers' last on-screen role won't be released. Nonetheless, the final version of FanDuel's ad still provided a touching send-off to the actor and cemented itself as one of the more emotional Super Bowl 2024 commercials.