![]() ![]() ![]() "A ticket is a ticket, whether you paid for it or someone else paid for it.”Īccording to the studio's website, money from unredeemed tickets may be used to pay for streaming Sound of Freedom in the Angel Studios app or "to help the filmmaker create additional content."Īngel did not respond to TIME's request for comment. “We do not break out Pay It Forward tickets versus regular tickets because they’re the same thing," Geesey said. Monteverde estimated that the Pay It Forward program accounts for less than 10% of Sound of Freedom's overall box-office earnings. Jared Geesey, Angel's senior vice president of global distribution, told the Hollywood Reporter that the "vast majority" of tickets are being bought directly by moviegoers and that only redeemed donated tickets are counted when Angel reports its box office grosses. This has led to questions about how many of those extra tickets are actually being used and whether they're over-inflating the movie's sales figures. To drum up ticket sales, Angel added a clip at the end of the film's trailer where Caviezel directly addresses the audience and encourages viewers to preorder their tickets to "send the message that God's children are no longer for sale." Caviezel also comes on screen at the end of the movie itself to urge audiences to participate in Angel's "Pay It Forward" program by buying an extra ticket for someone "who might not otherwise see. You have to trust us.' And we made a deal." And they told me, 'Alejandro, let us do our work. "They just had a completely different way of marketing a film that I’ve never seen," he said. Monteverde told Variety that the Harmons took a unique approach to promoting Sound of Freedom. On August 16, the studio announced in a press release that it repaid its backers their original investment plus a 20% profit. To distribute and market Sound of Freedom, Angel raised $5 million from nearly 7,000 crowd investors in exchange for shares of the film's revenue. What is Angel Studios and how did it get involved?įounded in 2021 by Mormon brothers Neal and Jeff Harmon, Angel Studios is a Utah-based media company that specializes in crowdfunding original films and TV series that "amplify light." In recent years, the studio has found success with The Chosen, a multi-season series about the life of Jesus touted by Angel as the "biggest crowdfunded project in TV history," and faith-based films like His Only Son and Testament. Disney allegedly declined to release the film, but ultimately allowed the filmmakers to buy back the rights.Īfter the movie was further delayed by the pandemic and passed on for distribution by other major studios and streamers, the Sound of Freedom team agreed to a deal with Angel Studios in March 2023. The film was initially picked up for distribution by Fox Latin America, but ended up in production limbo for nearly five years after Fox was acquired by Disney in 2019. ![]() “They are doing us a favor, the more they attack the movie, people show up," he said. Verástegui later told the New York Post that while he doesn't understand the criticism surrounding the movie, he sees it as a blessing in disguise. I have a weapon of mass instruction, and inspiration.” At Sound of Freedom's premiere, he told the Washington Examiner that after he heard Ballard's story, he was compelled to turn it into a film. Verástegui-who plays a role in Sound of Freedom in addition to producing-was also responsible for rallying the investors who supplied $14.5 million in funding for the film. In 2019, it was a completely finished film." "All I wanted was to present a question about the problem: human trafficking, child trafficking, child sexual exploitation," Monteverde said. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team while assigned to Homeland Security's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for over a decade prior to 2013. However, after the film’s producer, Eduardo Verástegui, met Ballard, the project came to center on the time that Ballard spent deployed as an undercover operative for the U.S. The resulting script, originally titled Mogul, was "purely fictionalized," he said. After watching a network news segment on child sex trafficking, Monteverde said he was inspired to start writing a screenplay on the subject. “The origin will answer a lot of these misconceptions on the film.”Īccording to the filmmaker, he began the project that became Sound of Freedom in 2015, two years before QAnon emerged. “The origin has been avoided, purposely or accidentally, in the media,” he said. In August, Monteverde-best known for writing and directing the 2006 drama Bella, which won the top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival-began addressing the controversies around Sound of Freedom, calling the association with QAnon "ridiculous" in an interview with Variety. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |