Angel Studios' newest theatrical release Sound of Freedom is now in theaters after reaching $10 million in pre-sale tickets in the U.S. and Canada. The low-budget film is "shaping up to be an unlikely box office hit," Variety reports.
At the time of writing, Sound of Freedom boasts an 85% critics score (13 reviews) and 99% audience score (2,500+ ratings) on Rotten Tomatoes.
To put things in perspective, let's compare Sound of Freedom with Disney's new Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
[Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny] only made $130 million total on opening weekend (a holiday weekend, no less!). That's $60 million domestically and $70 million internationally against a budget of more than $300 million (not including marketing).
I don't have the official numbers for Angel Studios' budget for Sound of Freedom, but I am certain it's a lot less than $300 million. Angel uses a crowd-funding/crowd-investing model, including for its recent Easter release His Only Son, which made over $12 million at the box office this year with a $250,000 budget.
Sound of Freedom is projected to make $20 million in its opening week.
"Angel crowdfunded $5M for P&A expenses on Sound of Freedom, part of that policy is awarding their donators with 120% return," Deadline reports. "They executed a similar crowdfunding-marketing plan on His Only Son and I'm told they just cut checks to their donors."
"It remains to be seen how the grosses play out here; faith-based audiences are big advance ticket buyers, however, this is nonetheless a heartbeat for the non-tentpole sector of the box office."
As happy as I am to see Disney's downward spiral into irrelevance, it is far more encouraging to see a film such as this achieve both box office and critical success.
The more people watching this movie means more people receiving the powerful message of this film: God's children are not for sale.
The movie is based on the true story of Tim Ballard, a federal agent that quit his job to save children from sex trafficking in South America. Ballard is played by Jim Caviezel, who is best known for his portrayal of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.
In case you didn't notice, Caviezel is actually one of the most BASED actors in the business. He recently did an interview in which flamed woke Hollywood and America's terrible mainstream media.
If the trailer doesn't make you want to watch Sound of Freedom, then this clip should do the trick (and if this doesn't work, then I don't know what will).
