The billion euros that Barbie has collected so far and the 400 that Oppenheimer has achieved so far have made Hollywood believe that it is worth betting on cinema.
And it’s a good thing, because in parallel to these two blockbuster hits, two more titles have broken records. Mission Impossible: Death Sentence, Part 1, in fourth place at the box office, already has a turnover of 235 million euros. But even more remarkable is the case of Sonido de libertad, a film that has not yet been released in Spain but has placed third at the box office in the United States.
It is an independent film, which cost 12 million euros and has already collected 111 million. The most surprising thing is that the film, which was directed by the Mexican Alejandro Monteverde and produced by his countryman, the actor Eduardo Verástegui, was made in 2018. That year it was sold to a subsidiary of Fox, but when the studio was acquired by Disney was left out of the release list. Verástegui bought the rights from Disney, spent five years looking for a way to get it into theaters, and eventually gave the rights to Angel Studios, a Utah-based Mormon-affiliated company that amassed a fortune pulling blockbuster blockbusters. to then launch into distributing Christian content on platforms and VoD.
Based on the alleged exploits of an immigration agent, Tim Ballard, who is credited with busting an international child prostitution ring (a fact that the Government will never be able to confirm or deny because it is classified information), Sonido de libertad features Jim Caviezel in the lead role, accompanied by a cast that includes Mira Sorvino, Bill Camp and Verástegui himself.
Constructed as a thriller, the film received harsh reviews from US media such as The New York Times and Rolling Stones, but also received support from celebrities such as Alejandro Sanz, Luis Fonsi, Jewel and Mel Gibson. The truth is that Verástegui and Angel Studios have turned the film into a good cause whose goal is not to entertain, but to spread a message. At the end of each screening, a video is played in which Caviezel, who played Jesus in La pasión de Cristo (another phenomenon that grossed more than 550 million euros in 2004), addresses the audience to ask – him to participate in the film’s dissemination campaign by buying tickets to give away and thus promote the cause against child prostitution. This has led to many screenings being sold out, even though more than half of the seats were empty.
The data is only part of the controversy that has been generated around the film, since there is no shortage of those who accuse it of being a vehicle of conspiranoics to promote false theories, such as the one that assures that Democratic politicians are behind the abduction of children to obtain a substance, adrenochrome, which they make with their blood. As ridiculous as this may seem, the accusation has always been one of the workhorses of QAnon, the movement that has supported the presidency of Donald Trump from the networks and of which Caviezel himself has declared himself a follower.
Other delusional theories about child trafficking have been part of digital fevers, such as Pizzagate, which claimed that a pizzeria in Washington DC was the headquarters of a pedophile organization. And also the one that claimed that the online sales chain Wayfair sent children instead of furniture.
While they have certainly benefited from the support of this powerful sector of US society, both pro-abortion campaigner and outspoken Trump supporter Eduardo Verástegui and Angel Studios executives have denied any involvement with them. The same has been done by Tim Ballard, also a Mormon, who has been accused by Vice magazine of exaggerating his successes, although he recently assured that adrenochrome is real.
