‘Sound of Freedom’ Director Sees His Film’s Box Office Success as ‘Bipartisan,’ Not Fueled by Conservatives
With $172 million and counting, Angel Studios’ “Sound of Freedom” has become the most successful independent film the U.S. box office has seen in the past decade, and has been championed by conservatives across the country, including former president Donald Trump.
But the film’s director, Alejandro Monteverde, doesn’t see the film’s resonance with audiences purely along political lines. In a wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times, he argued that for a movie like his to have such incredible success without the support of a top Hollywood studio, it needs to attract more than just staunch Republicans to theaters.
“You cannot arrive too close to $200 million [at the box office] with just a conservative market. You know what movies make that are faith-based? Like $80 million. But you don’t get to $200 million if you don’t cross over and become a bipartisan film,” Monteverde said.
As TheWrap reported last month, “Sound of Freedom” has become a breakthrough hit for Angel Studios, which has spent the past few years cultivating a passionate audience of Christian moviegoers with its limited engagement screenings of titles like “The Chosen” and through its unique crowdfunding model, which allows the studio to gauge how much grassroots interest there is in new potential projects and which ones have the potential for theatrical success.
But the film has also become a political lightning rod. Along with getting support from right-wing media as a shot at liberal Hollywood, “Sound of Freedom” has been championed by QAnon conspiracy theorists thanks in part to the film’s star, Jim Caviezel, and its core subject, Tim Ballard, voicing their belief in the conspiracy that rich elites are engaging in child trafficking.
Monteverde said that while working on the film, Caviezel was “one of the most professional actors, who dedicated himself to the role.” But after the film’s release, the filmmaker sought to distance himself from the political discourse surrounding “Sound of Freedom” as well as the QAnon support.
“When I started seeing that develop in front of me, my first instinct was to [distance] myself from it. I don’t want to be part of anything that falls in the area of politics,” he said.
“The minute [QAnon] started labeling it with conspiracy theories, it discredits the purity of the work,” he said. “If you’re telling me that there is all these conspiracy theories in the film, terminologies, that I’ll see symbols of pizza and the names Q or Z, or whatever — no. There’s none of that.”
Monteverde hopes that “Sound of Freedom” will be able to transcend politics as it prepares for international release over the next few weeks, including a release across Latin America and in Great Britain on the weekend of Aug. 31.
“These same conspiracy theories do not exist in Mexico, Argentina, France, Italy. I’m going to Colombia for the premiere, so I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. I want to keep it humble. But I’m feeling excited,” he said.
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