Before the end of next week, Sound of Freedom will pass a mind-blowing $180 million at the domestic box office to officially recoup its modest production costs 13 times over from domestic theaters alone.
That means the thriller ditched by Disney and ignored by every major streaming service will have earned more on home soil than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which also happened to cost $280 million more apiece to produce.
It’s an astonishing tale that hasn’t been without controversy, and even more could be set to arise now that the rights to a sequel appear to be getting caught up in a tug-of-war between multiple parties. Given the insane profit margins, Sound of Freedom 2 is an obvious investment, but nobody really seems to know who gets the chance to shepherd the project.
Producer Mike Ilich Jr.’s team told Variety that he’d signed a deal with subject Tim Ballard for “exclusive life rights,” and that a second installment in the prospective franchise is in the works, along with a scripted series and a documentary. However, director Alejandro Monteverde also told the same publication that he’d secured Ballard’s life rights as early as 2015, and that a sequel was being actively discussed.
That was quickly clarified as extending only to Sound of Freedom, though, while Angel Studios more than likely holds the rights to the title itself seeing as the production company was the one who distributed the film, and could theoretically mount additional stories focusing on characters other than Jim Caviezel’s Ballard.
As lawyer Lisa Callif put it; “This is unusual because if it was a big studio, the studio would have locked up all of the rights… I do understand why it happened because they probably were hoping to make this one movie and had no idea it would be as successful as it is. And now they’re in this predicament,” which is fair because nobody expected Sound of Freedom to become the monster it ended up being.
Published: Aug 23, 2023 11:47 am