Trivia / Patriots Day

• Actor-Shared Background: Mark Wahlberg was born and grew up in Boston, and plays a cop from there.
• Acclaimed Flop: The film did earn good reviews and even popped up on a couple of top tens of 2016 (including the National Board of Review) but only made 50.5 million worldwide on a budget of 45 million. A lack of awards buzz, some feeling the tragedy it was based on was still too recent for people to feel like watching a movie about it, and stiff competition with films like Hidden Figures and La La Land were the main factors as to why it didn't do so well.
• California Doubling: A lighter version at work. Although filmed on location in Massachusetts, production requirements and local community sentiment regarding the subject matter resulted in real locations not being used.
  • Framingham is used for Watertown, specifically Dzhokhar's capture.
  • Lasell College is used for UMass-Dartmouth.
  • The Marathon finish line on Boylston Street and the Watertown shootout were duplicated at the former Naval Air Station in South Weymouth, although some footage was done at the finish line proper during the 2016 Marathon.
• Cast the Runner-Up: While Melissa Benoist wound up being cast as Katherine Russell, she initially auditioned to play Jessica Kensky.
• Dueling Movies:
  • With Stronger, which covers the experiences of bombing victim Jeff Bauman. They were filmed simultaneously.
  • Also a proposed third movie called Boston Strong which was supposed to star Casey Affleck but was merged into the project.
• Fake Nationality:
  • American Alex Wolff as Chechen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
  • Georgian Themo Melikidze as Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
• Production Posse: This is Peter Berg's third collaboration with Mark Wahlberg after Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Alex Wolff even acknowledged in interviews how frightening his resemblance to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is.
• Vindicated by Cable: Though it flopped in theaters, it was a huge hit when it was added to Netflix in 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, amusingly not long after fellow Peter Berg/Mark Wahlberg feature Spenser Confidential was released as a Netflix Original.
• What Could Have Been: It was originally supposed to focus solely upon Ed Davis' experiences during the manhunt, but was merged with another proposed movie named Boston Strong featuring Casey Affleck and became a general overview.

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