JESUS WANTS YOU TO BUY EXTRA TICKETS TO THIS RIGHT-WING MOVIE

On July 3, Variety told us this about a newly released film from a religious-right distributor:

“Sound of Freedom,” a faith-based film about child sex trafficking, is shaping up to be an unlikely box office hit.

Angel Studios, the streaming and distribution company behind the low-budget drama, claims that the film has generated more than $10 million in pre-sales ahead of its theatrical release on July 4. That’s ... another sign of the buying power of religious moviegoers....

Yesterday, Breitbart's John Nolte called the movie a hit:

Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom opened Tuesday, July 4, to an astonishing $11.6 million, which nearly topped the July 4 take of Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Some caveats apply.... Sound of Freedom sold $14.2 million worth of tickets Tuesday, which tops Dial of Destiny and makes the Christian-themed film America’s top 4th of July ticket seller.

The reason those “extra” ticket sales don’t officially count is because those tickets were not used. The additional sales were part of the movie’s “pay it forward” program, where people who enjoy the movie purchase a ticket for someone else. That’s some pretty smart marketing.

So what Nolte is saying is that this seems like a hugely popular movie, but partly because $2.6 million worth of tickets were purchased but never used. And presumably some tickets purchased through the "pay it forward" program were used. So it's a hit either because individuals have been persuaded to buy more tickets than they need themselves ... or because the studio is buying extra tickets and giving them away in order to make the movie appear to be a bigger hit than it actually is.

In the book business, this kind of manipulation is called bulk buying. Publishers -- particularly publishers of certain right-wing books -- buy their own books in bulk, and the books appear on best-seller lists as a result. The difference here is that Angel Studios acknowledges what it's doing, and portrays it as simple Christian charity. This is from an Angel Studios press release:

Angel Studios’ PAY IT FORWARD Technology Propels SOUND OF FREEDOM to #1 Movie in America July 4th

... PAY IT FORWARD is patent-pending technology from Angel Studios, which empowers moviegoers to purchase tickets for other people whom they want to see a particular film.... For more information, go to https://angel.com/freedom

Go to that link and you see this:

Nice marketing plan: You persuade people that they're honoring the Baby Jesus (or owning the libs) by buying more tickets than they need, and voila -- you've got yourself a box office success.

So what's the movie about? Nolte explains:

Sound of Freedom stars Jim Caviezel and Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a real-life U.S. government agent who quit his job at Homeland Security to rescue children from drug cartels and sex traffickers in Latin America.

And now for some libel:

Sound of Freedom was produced in 2018, five full years ago, and 20th Century Fox acquired the distribution rights. But after Disney acquired Fox in early 2019, it shelved the movie. It then took the producers years to acquire the distribution rights back from Disney....

So why would the Disney Grooming Syndicate dump a movie with a meager $15 million production budget starring a bankable star like Jim Caviezel and a full-blown Oscar winner like Mira Sorvino?

Easy answer... Under CEO Bob Iger, Disney became demonic, and today’s very different and morally corrupted Disney wants nothing to do with anything Christian. Secondly, the same Disney that is now so aggressively defending child groomers and engaging in grooming and sexualizing little kids likely wanted nothing to do with a movie that condemns child sex trafficking.

Or maybe it was because Operation Underground Railroad, the organization started by the real Tim Ballard, was under criminal investigation in Ballard's home state of Utah. (The investigation was closed earlier this year with no charges filed.) Maybe it's because Ballard has been accused of exaggerating the extent of the child trafficking problem, and also exaggerating his group's role in rescues of trafficked children.

Nolte continues:

Ah, but the arc of history does bend toward justice, doesn’t it? The Disney Grooming Syndicate has released one money-losing flop after another. But Sound of Freedom will go on to make a nice, fat profit (Sound of Freedom is projected to gross anywhere from $20 to $28 million by Monday).

Actually, three of this year's top six box office hits are from Disney, according to Box Office Mojo: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($356,057,705 domestic gross, $838,313,750 worldwide gross), The Little Mermaid ($283,804,896 domestic gross, $527,549,654 worldwide gross), and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($214,504,909 domestic gross, $476,071,180 worldwide gross). And I'm pretty sure no one bought extra tickets to those movies because a studio boss persuaded them that God wanted them to.