Praise God and pass the popcorn.

Sound of Freedom actually beat Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One at the movie box office this weekend. Sure, the true-to-life story of child sex trafficking came in a distant third behind the hyper-hyped Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, but it topped Tom Cruise’s latest. Nobody would expect the well-reviewed Mission Impossible to be taken its second week out by Sound of Freedom.

Sound of Freedom banked $20,140,000 million, compared to MI’s $19,500,000.

What’s more, Sound of Freedom had a much higher per screen average. Plus, in a very strong sign the film is gaining strength, it played in 20 more theaters than it did last weekend. And business dropped off only 26.2% from the previous week. The rest of the movies in the top 10 dropped between 36% and 71%.

So far, Sound of Freedom has earned almost $125 million … and has opened the eyes of millions.

Meanwhile, the movie based on the Barbie doll made an whopping $155 million. Oppenheimer, about the man who built the American atomic bomb, rang up an impressive $66 million. 

Box Office Mojo has all the details here.

Effort to Stifle the Movie Failing

Megan Brock answers the question “Why Media Outlets Want You To Think a Hit Movie About Child Sex Trafficking is Linked to QAnon.”  Why is so much of the legacy media trying to bring the film down, talking about “conspiracy theories” or quibbling with how the fact-based movie differs from the true story. Or insisting the movie is “right-wing”. 

Just two days ago, when Donald Trump screened the film and said he would require the “death penalty for anyone caught trafficking children across our border,” the Independent felt compelled to call the movie a ‘QAnon-linked’ film. Truly bizarre.

Brock notes that many of the same outlets knocking the content of the film had no problem reporting on Tim Ballard and the child sex trafficking issue before. In fact, speaking of Hollywood, the Independent was all over the 2017 story of actor Ashton Kutcher testifying before the Senate on how his organization had uncovered 2,000 victims of sex trafficking.

So what’s changed? 

Perhaps the reason some are so eager to discredit the message of Sound of Freedom is because the story, while much darker and destructive than the discussion over “banned books,” ultimately leads to the same place: you either believe it’s right or it’s wrong to sexualize children. There is no middle ground.

The good news: The efforts to disparage the film are failing … gloriously.

The box office numbers can’t be any clearer: The “Sound of Freedom” is chiming louder and stronger, and if response to the film is any indication, Sound of Freedom will be echoing far into the future.