Angel Studios’ “Sound of Freedom,” the film which stars Jim Cavaziel and exposes child trafficking, just had another amazing weekend performance, shooting it up in the charts and putting it in a spot of dominance over most other films despite it being released from a small studio and having a far smaller budget than most flicks that perform at its level.
In fact, “Sound of Freedom” dominated the past weekend, coming in at second place. It followed only Tom Cruise’s new film, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” which had a ~$56 million domestic opening weekend and $80 million first five days.
Deadline, in its report on the success of “Sound of Freedom” and noting that its continued strong performance at the box office is almost unheard of in the movie industry,said (emphasis ours), “Also faring extremely well here is Angels Studios’ anti-child trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom, which the distrib [sic] is calling at a $27M second weekend in second place, up a hu-mungo 37% (when does that ever happen?) for a running total of north of $85M at 3,265 theaters. This Jim Caviezel movie is going well north of $100M in the next week.”
That means that “Sound of Freedom,” which had only a $14.5 million budget, has been highly profitable for the studio. Breitbart’s John Nolte claimed that the total cost was about $35 million and so half of everything after that has been profit for the studio, writing , “Everything after about $35 million is pure profit for Sound of Money — er, I mean Sound of Freedom. Already, the people behind this blockbuster have split about $50 million with theaters. That’s $25 million clear and counting.” So it’s in the black by a large margin, meaning it’s not just a powerful cultural force but also a financial success.
The same can’t be said for Disney’s new Indiana Jones movie. As “Sound of Freedom” rockets ever higher, buoyed by the film’s having become a new front in the culture war and connection to the still-red-hot Jeffrey Epstein controversy, Disney is seeing its offering for the summer, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” flop miserably from a profit perspective.
That movie cost Disney $300 million in production alone, with millions more lavished on it in advertising and distribution costs. So far, it has brought in just $302 million worldwide, meaning it barely beat its production costs and is nowhere near the $600 million full cost of the film, which takes into account $200 million in advertising and $100 million in other costs. Being nearly $300 million in the red, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is being dominated by “Sound of Freedom” from a profit perspective.
Making the recent profit of “Sound of Freedom” all the more painful for Disney is that it had bought the IP for the movie, which was produced half a decade ago, but then never released it. Angel Studios bought the film from Disney for a few million and then released it to wide success and acclaim as Disney struggles to make anything that people want to watch.