‘This could end up being one of the most profitable films of the summer’
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Published Jul 13, 2023 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 5 minute read
With the summer movie blockbuster season in full swing, there are familiar names leading the pack. Chris Pratt and the Guardians of the Galaxy got the party started in May, with the Fast & Furious gang and Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones keeping things going into June.
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Then along came Jim Caviezel and Sound of Freedom.
Inspired by the true story of Tim Ballard, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who hunts down child sex traffickers, the dramatic thriller has been playing to sold-out theatres since opening earlier this month. Partially financed through online donations, the film casts Caviezel as a federal agent fighting to save abducted children from pedophiles in the Colombian jungle. The modestly budgeted title, which was independently produced and released by Angel Studios, was the third most-popular movie in North America last weekend, earning $19.6 million behind top-grossing Insidious: The Red Door (which opened with $33 million) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($27.4 million in its second weekend). But by mid-week, Sound of Freedom, which cost $14.5 million to make, was second on the box office charts, pocketing over $50 million since its July 4 debut.
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Angel Studios managed to drum up interest in Sound of Freedom by soliciting donations to help market the film. It has also invited supporters to “pay it forward” by purchasing tickets for people who might not be able to afford to go to the movies. “We believe that the model of the Hollywood gatekeeper system, of selecting content, doesn’t choose the content that people want to watch,” said Jared Geesey, Angel’s senior vice president of global distribution told the New York Times. Exhibitor Relations senior box-office analyst Jeff Bock isn’t surprised by its success. “Whenever there is a film genre ignored by distributors for a prolonged period of time there’s an opportunity. Sound of Freedom is a film that appeals to a non-traditional film going demographic, and thus has become the outsider with a big upside,” Bock tells Postmedia. “It’s extremely difficult for a new distributor to break in, and using outside-the-box ways of selling tickets has been the film’s guiding light.”
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Bock thinks that after its surprising start that Sound of Freedom could join the $100-million club later this summer. “If momentum keeps up, this could end up being one of the most profitable films of the summer,” he says.
But the film has proven to be a political lightning rod, embraced by far-right audiences while being accused by liberal media outlets of catering to QAnon conspiracy theorists (something Angel Studios denies). Geesey told the Washington Post that critics trying to link Sound of Freedom to watched the film.
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Caviezel has embraced the QAnon movement, which promotes the belief that global elites behind a child sex trafficking ring that kidnaps children and harvests their blood and organs. In its review, The Guardian called the film a “QAnon-adjacent thriller,” while Rolling Stone noted that it appealed to a mostly “white-haired audience” and declared its success as a “box office triumph for QAnon believers.” In 2021, Caviezel, who led Mel Gibson’s 2004 smash hit The Passion of the Christ, appeared at a QAnon convention in Las Vegas where he invoked Gibson’s battle cry from Braveheart as he hinted at an upcoming war between patriots and evildoers. “We must fight for that authentic freedom and live my friends. By God, we must live and with the Holy Spirit as your shield and Christ as your sword may you join Saint Michael and all the other angels in defending God and sending Lucifer and his henchmen straight back to hell where they belong,” he said.
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“We are headed into the storm of all storms,” he said, using a term that features prominently among QAnon adherents. “Yes, the storm is upon us.”
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When speaking about Sound of Freedom earlier that same year, Caviezel pushed a QAnon conspiracy that trafficked children are being killed for a chemical compound called adrenochrome. “When you are scared, you produce adrenaline. If you’re an athlete, you get in the fourth quarter, you have adrenaline that comes out of you,” he said at a conference in Oklahoma in April 2021 [per Newsweek]. “If a child knows he’s going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline. And they have a lot of terms that they use that he (Ballard) takes me through, but. It’s the worst horror I’ve ever seen. The screaming alone, even if I never, ever saw it, it’s beyond — and these people that do it, there will be no mercy for them.”
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Meanwhile, Ballard, who advised President Donald Trump on trafficking issues, entertained a viral conspiracy that took hold online amid claims furniture retailer Wayfair was selling children in storage cabinets. “Law enforcement’s going to flush that out and we’ll get our answers sooner than later,” Ballard said in a July 2020 Twitter video. “But I want to tell you this: children are sold that way.” With Q’s identity a mystery, many believers also think former U.S. president Donald Trump will eventually reclaim power and put an end to the global pedophile ring. But despite Caviezel’s involvement, not all critics have been quick to try and tie Sound of Freedom, and its subject matter, to the QAnon movement. The film is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 77% favourable critic score and a perfect 100% audience score.