It’s not every day that a $15 million movie, released by an independent producer, and paid for at least in part through crowdfunding, can climb to the top of the box office charts. And yet, that’s exactly the fate that’s greeted Angel Studios’ Sound Of Freedom, which has just passed the $100 million mark after just three weeks in theaters, making it the most successful independent film of 2023 by a country mile.
How did this particular movie pull it off—landing at No. 16 on the year’s domestic box office totals, just a few million behind Warner Bros.’ far-more-expensive The Flash? It’s a complicated question, one that touches on the film’s unorthodox funding methods, its faith-based marketing, and its blend of traditional filmmaking with messaging that relentlessly tells its fans that the mere act of paying to see it is a virtuous and valorous act. (This is, after all, a film that ends with star Jim Caviezel popping up, Thanos-style, for an after-credits scene, imploring audiences to “make Sound Of Freedom the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of 21st-century slavery.”)
Here, then, is a quick look at a highly unconventional blockbuster, one that’s proven as controversial as it has been lucrative over its last month in theaters.
What is Sound Of Freedom about?
Firstly: Sound Of Freedom stars Jim Caviezel as a fictionalized version of Tim Ballard, a former ICE agent who went solo to found Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-human-trafficking organization, in the early 2010s. (Vice, which has reported heavily on OUR, reported last week that Ballard has quietly “stepped away” from the group, which has faced accusations of exaggerating at least some of its accomplishments, which include claiming to have rescued “thousands” of children from human trafficking operations.) Ballard reportedly hand-picked Caviezel to play him in the movie, despite the two looking nothing alike, thanks to his appreciation for 2002's The Count Of Monte Cristo.
Directed and co-written by Alejandro Monteverde, the film was actually shot way back in 2018 and sold to a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox for release. But the company’s acquisition by Disney scuttled plans to get the movie out, and the film’s producer, Eduardo Verástegui—an actor, musician, Trump crony, anti-abortion activist, etc.—eventually bought the movie back to try to release it independently. Several years later, Angel Studios, a streaming service and film studio that rose from the ashes of the “we’ll censor your DVDs for you” business VidAngel, picked up the movie, and the rest is shockingly successful history.
As for the film itself, critics have described it as a pretty standard “principled man goes rogue” procedural, as Caviezel’s Ballard, burnt out after years of catching online pedophiles, cuts ties with the government so that he can rescue a kidnapped girl from Columbian revolutionaries. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman described it as a “solid thriller,” emphasizing that the film’s base appeal works even without the huge amounts of baggage that have been attached to it by its supporters and star. (More on the latter in a second.) It is, in other words, and by all accounts, a functional movie—not some kind of bizarre Dinesh D’Souza screed.
Why is Sound Of Freedom controversial?
Last week, AMC Theaters CEO Adam Aron and Angel Studios exec Brandon Purdie were forced to issue a joint statement to the movies’ fans, asking them to please stop accusing the theater chain of trying to keep them from giving it money for Sound Of Freedom. AMC was fielding a variety of rumors, including accusations of canceling showings, sabotaging sound systems, and even screwing with the A/C in its theaters, in order to make viewing the movie an uncomfortable experience, as part of a narrative that someone was trying to “stop” people from seeing the film.
All of which, we’d venture, says less about Sound Of Freedom itself—the movie reportedly avoids trucking in any seriously out-there QAnon stuff, sticking to a more dramatic and violent, but mostly grounded, version of verifiable facts—and more about the mindsets being primed to see it. (To quote Aron: “Conspiracy theorists are so prevalent in America. So much garbage information is spread.”) The messaging surrounding the film ties, not directly into QAnon stuff—for all that Ballard has made comments about “Satanic ritual abuse,” and Caviezel has made the right-wing rounds talking about “adrenochrome”—but into the sense of nigh-apocalyptic urgency that powers those extreme impulses.
Angel Studios itself claims that “Seeing the film is the first step in spreading awareness about child trafficking,” calling it part of “a historical movement to promote stories that amplify light.” A key part of the movie’s messaging centers on positioning the very act of seeing it as a radical and moral act; anything that then gets in the way of that process—even if it’s just a busted sound system—presumably becomes immoral in response. (And also, yeah, Jim Caviezel is totally an adrenochrome guy, who recently went on Jordan Peterson’s podcast, alongside Ballard, to help position Sound Of Freedom as a sort of righteous litmus test; the film has also been adopted as an ideological whacking stick by conservatives, notably Donald Trump, who recently hosted a screening in an effort to shore up his base.)
Why is Sound Of Freedom making so much money?
Sound Of Freedom isn’t the first time that Angel Studios has tapped into faith-based/conservative bases for a massive financial win; the company also produces The Chosen, a TV-set crowdfunding success story that recently signed a deal to run on The CW as part of the otherwise decimated fall season. (Oh, how far they’ve come since getting sued for editing naughty words and sexy scenes out of people’s DVDs.) And Sound Of Freedom is, undeniably, a success; notably, its box office performance has only improved in the three weekends it has been in theaters, bringing in a hefty $27 million in theaters this past weekend.
It is worth noting, though, that a percentage of those sales are the product of Angel Studios’ “Pay It Forward” program, which allows donors to send the company money to essentially comp tickets for movie-goers who can’t afford it, in theory. In its opening weekend in theaters, Angel Studios reported that Sound Of Freedom made $2.6 million through these payments, contributing to an overall $14.2 million. It’s not clear how much of the movie’s subsequent $100 million box office take has come from people making these donations, but if the proportions have held steady, it’s a decent chunk of change. (Again, the movie reportedly ends with Caviezel basically begging viewers to pony up.)
The upshot of all this, though, is that $100 million is a reality-deforming amount of money, especially for a movie running on a $15 million budget. It’s the kind of number that demands a response, if not outright imitation; it remains to be seen how Hollywood will respond to this new competitor in its midst.
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