If somebody had asked you at the beginning of 2023 to name the biggest box office success story of the year, then there’s not a chance anyone would have settled on Sound of Freedom.
After all, the thriller was filmed five years ago in the summer of 2018 and found itself in purgatory once Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and ditched the studio’s distribution plans, leaving it without a home until the upstart Angel Studios stepped in.
Even then, an independent outfit specializing in religious-friendly fare was hardly a barometer of things to come, but we can now justifiably call the Jim Caviezel vehicle the single biggest runaway freight train to hit cinemas at any point since 2023 began, and at this rate there isn’t going to be anything that comes close to topping it.
Sound of Freedom isn’t just holding on at the box office, but it’s getting stronger, too. In its latest weekend, earnings jumped by a quite frankly ridiculous 37 percent to bump its running domestic tally past $82 million, and it’ll cross $100 million in the next few days.
Not only that, but if it continues on its current trajectory then a final haul somewhere close to $200 million isn’t entirely out of the question. To put that into perspective; The Flash, John Wick: Chapter 4, Fast X, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny all cost at least eight times more to produce than the $14 million Sound of Freedom, and yet there’s every chance it’s going to leave them lying in the dust by the time it eventually leaves theaters.
