“Sound of Freedom” has become the surprise box office hit of the summer.
Summary
“Sound of Freedom” has become the surprise box office hit of the summer. The thriller, starring Jim Caviezel as a federal agent taking down child traffickers, has experienced unlikely box office success, outperforming expectations.
- Sound of Freedom has grossed more than $85 million at the box office, far exceeding its expected gross. The film has a good chance of making more than $100 million at this point.
- Sound of Freedom saw week-over-week growth after its debut weekend, enough to pull in $27 million over the last weekend, enough to finish second at the domestic box office behind “Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One.”
- The film is based on the exploits of Department of Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard and a real-life raid in Colombia that rescued over 50 children in 2014.
- Filming for Sound of Freedom was completed in 2018, but the film was shelved by Disney in 2019 after it purchased 20th Century Fox, which owned the distribution rights.
- Faith-based distribution company Angel Studios acquired the rights in March of this year. The film was completed with a budget of $14.5 million, which it nearly earned back on its first day of theaters after grossing $14.2 million on its day of release.
- The New York Times’ Marc Tracy wrote that although Sound of Freedom won’t be the summer’s biggest hit, “it may be the unlikeliest.” While the film is “not explicitly faith-based,” the movie “stands as the latest instance of an entertainment industry success story that targeted an audience that is often overlooked by Hollywood.”
- NBC News reported on one prominent supporter of the film: former President Donald Trump. Trump plans to screen Sound of Freedom at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, accompanied by Caviezel and Tim Ballard, the Department of Homeland Security agent who inspired the film.
- The Guardian derided Sound of Freedom as “the QAnon-adjacent thriller seducing America.” “The uninitiated may not pick up on the red-yarn-and-corkboard subtext pinned onto a mostly straightforward extraction mission in South America, pretty much Taken with a faint whiff of something noxious in the air,” wrote Charles Bramesco. “Those tuned in to the eardrum-perforating frequency of QAnon, however, have heeded a clarion call that leads right to the multiplex.”
- “After praying to God for a miracle to happen for this film, please send an angel to rescue this film, Angel Studios rescued this film and, because of them, millions of people are seeing this film in these ten days, more than 5 million people showed up in theaters, and I can’t believe that this is happening,” Sound of Freedom producer Eduardo Verástegui told Fox News. “I feel like I’m dreaming. This is the American dream.”
- Breitbart noted Sound of Freedom grossed $24.7 million in its second weekend in theaters, which represents a 26 percent increase over its debut weekend, a rare example of week-to-week growth when many movies peak at opening weekend then decline week-over-week.
- National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez reminded readers that “child sex trafficking is not a right-wing conspiracy theory.” Lopez wrote, “Ending the sex trafficking of children should unite us regardless of politics or religion or anything else. Adults must be adults and protect the innocent — and their innocence. “Let freedom ring” cannot be a thing of the past.”
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
