Sound of Failure
A right-wing box-office hit is making a mockery of Hollywood’s would-be blockbusters.
“HOW FAITH-BASED ‘SOUND OF FREEDOM BECAME THIS SUMMER’S UNLIKELY BOX OFFICE HIT”
“JIM CAVIEZEL ANTI-CHILD-TRAFFICKING THRILLER RINGS PAST $100M AT BOX OFFICE”
“'SOUND OF FREEDOM’ HITS $100 MILLION AT BOX OFFICE DESPITE SCRUTINY”
It’s been an amusing week watching Hollywood trade publications fall over themselves trying to explain the box-office success of “Sound of Freedom,” which many stories have described using some kind of combination of the words “faith-based,” “anti-child-trafficking,” and “thriller” while largely avoiding combinations of “right-wing,” “far-right,” “QAnon-adjacent,” “conservative,” or other.
Those first and last headlines are extra amusing, and show how completely out of touch these publications are with the movie’s target audience, which is A) likely attracted to it because of the scrutiny against it, buying their tickets in defiance of “wokeness,” or B) they have absolutely no idea about any kind of controversy the movie is generating. I personally believe the latter is likely more accurate, though I’m sure there are moviegoers feeling extra proud of themselves for helping to close the gap between “Sound of Freedom’s” ticket sales and those of would-be Hollywood blockbusters like “The Flash,” which has barely crossed $100 million in the US after a month in theaters (“Sound of Freedom” surpassed that this week).
If you’re confused, the headlines speak for themselves. “Sound of Freedom” is a new right-wing propaganda movie posing as a “faith-based thriller” about child trafficking, which has become a major issue for conservatives amid easily debunked conspiracy theories linking Democrats to trafficking rings. The most famous of those false conspiracies is known as “QAnon,” and the movie’s star, Jim Caviezel, is one of its most prominent supporters.
But no, I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt and saying that’s not why the movie is a hit (though I’m sure there are plenty of QAnon-ers lining up for it). Similarly labeled “faith-based” releases have exploded at the box office before, and every time Hollywood journalists and box-office pundits are completely taken aback. Christian conservatives go to the movies?? People in small-town rural America exist?? Yes and yes. The fact is that this wasn’t all that “unlikely.” It wasn’t that long ago that a faith-based TV SERIES (you read that right) was making headlines for its box-office gains after select episodes were released in theaters across the nation. The show was “The Chosen,” a historical drama about Jesus Christ, and when the first two episodes of the third season hit theaters last year, it earned $9 million in its opening weekend. Not bad!
Who remembers that “American Sniper” was THE BIGGEST movie at the US box office in 2014? That was a year with two MCU movies, a Transformers movie, a Hunger Games movie, a Hobbit movie, and an X-Men movie. But the movie that might as well have been a “faith-based thriller,” or at least targeted towards the audience most interested in that, came out on top among American audiences.
I come from a small town in upstate New York and know of people who have seen, and raved, about “Sound of Freedom.” Its success is not a shock to me; in places like that, word travels fast. The Sunday church conversation is most likely how good “Sound of Freedom” is. These aren’t raging conspiracy theorists — they’re people who go to the movies probably once a year, and this year they’re cashing in their ticket on this movie. Last year, it was “Top Gun: Maverick,” and Hollywood was betting on Tom Cruise to make magic again with the latest “Mission: Impossible,” or for another aging star, Harrison Ford, to attract them in another “long-awaited” sequel, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
But “Maverick,” and — I’m sorry to include them in the same sentence — “Sound of Freedom” capture something that is not easily replicated, and the box office shows that. “Dial of Destiny” will probably soon stall out; it’s earned just over $300 million worldwide (half of which is from the US) and it cost that much just to make. “Sound of Freedom” had a fraction of that budget. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” opened below expectations, though still in line with other movies in the franchise. But I’d bet that “Sound of Freedom” is eating into both movies’ box office.
“Oppenheimer” seems to be the exception. The movie is on track to blow past projections this weekend, and it’s the kind of film older, more conservative audiences would flock to the theater for years ago: an adult drama and historical biopic about a prominent American figure. But it also seems to be benefiting from being released on the same weekend as “Barbie,” with audiences taking part in “Barbenheimer” fever, as well as more expensive premium large format ticket sales.
The short of it is that “Sound of Freedom” is making a mockery of Hollywood’s biggest tentpole releases, the movies that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on making and then more promoting. Angel Studios, which released “Sound of Freedom,” found its audience and convinced them to see the movie. A “crowdfunding initiative,” in which moviegoers are being encouraged to buy tickets for strangers as a “pay it forward” campaign, is the kind of thing its audience will eat up, and it potentially gets “Sound of Freedom” more ticket sales even if there aren’t people in the seats.
The whole thing speaks to a much larger issue for Hollywood: it has no idea how to market its movies in a post-pandemic, TikTok-obsessed, politically polarized country, where young people have the attention span of a peanut; old people don’t leave the house; and millions of Americans have been convinced by a *checks notes* billionaire former reality TV star that Hollywood is too elitist.
The old tricks don’t seem to be working. You can’t make a big-budget franchise installment with a well-known star and it magically makes money anymore. Some of the biggest duds this year have been entries in long-running franchises (“Fast X,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”) in which the marketing push seemed to center around “You liked it before, why not now?!” The audience reaction was mostly “so what.”
But there’s also the sad reality that some marketing is out of the studios’ hands. A movie like “Sound of Freedom” will capture the conservative zeitgeist through word of mouth but also from prominent far-right figures promoting it for free. And social media is the wild west that Hollywood has been slow to navigate. The latest “Minions” movie got an unpredictable bump from young people going to screenings dressed in suits as part of a “gentle-minions” TikTok trend. “Barbenheimer” became a phenomenon, and it was all thanks to social-media memes; the only thing the studios did was schedule the movies on the same day. To Warner Bros.’ credit (the studio releasing “Barbie”), the marketing has been off-the-charts good, and the movie has been everywhere. But studios need to find a way to create online chatter themselves, and so far, they mostly have no idea how.
And making better movies, like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” probably goes a long way, too.
Best piece yet Trav