Brian Banks premiered at the LA Film Festival on September 22, 2018, and was released in the United States by Bleecker Street on August 9, 2019.

Banks is currently on parole and registered as a sex offender due to an incident 11 years prior where he and a classmate, Kennisha, sneaked off to kiss.

When Banks overheard teachers approaching, he fled to avoid getting caught, leading the scorned Kennisha to falsely accuse him of raping her.

His childhood dreams of becoming an NFL player are further damaged when new laws require him to wear an ankle monitor at all times as well as staying 2,000 feet away from schools and public gathering spots, preventing him from playing football.

The final narration reveals that Pete Carroll, a former University of Southern California coach who offered him a scholarship to USC during his high school days, invited him to try out for the Seattle Seahawks; failing to make the team due to his skills atrophying as a result of his extended time in prison, Banks trained hard over the next year and eventually was signed by the Atlanta Falcons.

In the United States and Canada, Brian Banks was released alongside The Kitchen, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and The Art of Racing in the Rain, and was projected to gross around $2.5 million from 1,327 theaters in its opening weekend.

The site's critical consensus reads: "While it remains a reasonably inspiring drama, Brian Banks might have presented a more complex or fully realized version of the real-life story it dramatizes.