How The FanDuel Super Bowl Commercial With Carl Weathers Changed After His Death

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.