Thanks to a Wednesday haul of another $4.5 million, Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom has crossed the magic $100 million mark at the domestic box office.
“Angel Studios, the platform empowering filmmakers with full creative control to crowdfund and create, has reached a new theatrical milestone,” the studio said in a statement released Thursday. “Its independent summer hit, SOUND of FREEDOM. has now sold over 8.9 million tickets, and the film has now passed $100M in box office revenue.”
“Since the films’ July 4 release, SOUND of FREEDOM has never left the top 3 positions on the charts[.]”
On Wednesday, after 16 days of release, Sound of Freedom also managed to nearly top Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One once again, which is only in its eighth day of release — $4.37 million for Dead Reckoning’s Wednesday haul compared to Sound of Freedom’s $4.5 million.
But.
As Breitbart News reported Tuesday, Tom Cruise’s seventh outing as Ethan Hunt enjoys the advantage of playing in 1,000+ more screens—4,327 to 3,265. So, as far as packing in the crowds on a per-screen average, Jim Caviezel’s $14.5 million movie is beating Tom Cruise’s $250 to $300 million blockbuster, and doing so after being in wide release a week longer.
Currently, Sound of Freedom is the second most popular movie in the country and there are no signs it will slow down. Barbie and Oppenheimer open this weekend, but just as we saw with Dead Reckoning the previous weekend, Sound of Freedom is operating in a lane all of its own. The anti-child trafficking movie (a topic the pro-grooming left finds offensive and controversial) is bringing normal people back to movie theaters. I’ve talked to all kinds of people who long ago divorced mainstream Hollywood and have or intend to see Sound of Freedom. Top Gun: Maverick did the same last year.
Normal people are craving normal entertainment. No gay sex. No smug lectures about the patriarchy. No deconstructing our heroes. No Mary Sues. Normal people want good stories created around interesting and complicated characters. Hollywood did this without breaking a sweat for a hundred years. Now a normal movie is an exception in an ocean of woketardery, shaming, and the normalization of destructive neuroses and perversions.
Angel Studios, the distributor also behind the streaming phenomenon The Chosen, has a real opportunity here. Its brand is now associated with a quality product that normal people can enjoy. Hopefully, Angel will use this moment to leverage that reputation and keep the momentum going, but keep it going with quality and not content simply marked “Christian” or “conservative.” That’s not enough. Christians and conservatives want good movies, great stories, iconic characters, and compelling themes first… A far second place is hitting our religious or political sweet spot.
Right or left, no one is entertained or emotionally moved by movies driven by rhetoric. If you want to make $100 million, you have to move and thrill us. You have to cast a spell and hold it. No one remembers what art told them. Everyone remembers how art made them feel.
By all accounts, Sound of Freedom is a quality movie about an important subject that’s making a fortune and driving the left-wing establishment crazy.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
I suspect Disney will soon produce a remake where the sex traffickers are the heroes rescuing children from their traditional parents. Yes, the liberation of gay sex to unshackle the suffocating tenets of the Christian Faith. Coming soon to an empty theater near you.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.