From ‘Sound Of Freedom’ To ‘Brave The Dark’: Angel Studios Has A Plan For Bringing Faith-Based Adult Dramas To A Theater Near You
One of the more interesting box office phenomena over the past five years of pandemic closings, slow ramp-ups, strike gaps, migration to streaming, and studio caution has been the way smaller companies have gone about dividing up whatever leftover movie-theater revenue may or may not be left on the table. 2025 might be the most fully “normal” movie-release year since the pre-pandemic times in terms of studio releases, but even then, we’re looking at a landscape of consolidation, where Fox is now a Disney shingle that releases a few theatrical movies in addition to a bunch of Hulu content; where other studios have flirted with a tentpole-only strategy that leaves out practically anything without $100 million-plus potential; and adults are more likely to look into various at-home streaming bundles than shell out for a multiplex-chain subscription program. As a result, studio-owned arthouse arms like Focus and Searchlight have made some of the most notable recent mid-level hits for, yes, grown-ups; some independent distributors like A24, Neon, and IFC are making bigger plays than ever; Fathom Events have gotten more frequent; and even more upstart companies have tried their hand at wider releases.
No such company had a bigger, more surprising start than Angel Studios back in 2023, whose second-ever release, the thriller Sound of Freedom, made $184 million in North America – meaning that an action movie about child trafficking starring the faintly crazy-eyed Jim Caviezel sold more tickets here than new entries in the Indiana Jones or Mission: Impossible series.
That success has proved nearly impossible to replicate; the late January release Brave the Dark did not perform a similar shaming even of Mel Gibson’s poorly reviewed Flight Risk. (Ironically, that Gibson/Wahlberg team-up has previously featured in a decidedly more faith-based enterprise.) At the same time, Brave the Dark’s modest $3.8 million take after its first two weekends isn’t too terrible for a movie whose biggest star is Mad Men supporting player Jared Harris. Even if it doesn’t hold up in the weeks ahead, it can’t have cost the studio much, and will eventually give way to another Angel title. The studio has carved out its faith-based niche, and over the holidays wound up with its second-biggest movie: Homestead, a post-apocalyptic sort-of western starring Neal McDonough that’s crossed the $20 million line in North America. (Though Sound of Freedom came out globally, these movies tend to do the lion’s share of business here.) Like Brave the Dark, it wasn’t a Sound of Freedom-level smash. On the other hand, a movie starring Neal McDonough is likely to outgross fully half of this year’s Best Picture nominees, as well as recent projects starring Scarlett Johansson, Halle Berry, and Tom Hanks. Cabrini, the studio’s spring 2024 offering, did nearly identical business.
It’s worth pointing out that minus the Sound of Freedom outlier, Angel hasn’t actually matched the consistency of some of the bigger-studio faith-based releases. Sony has put out a number of hit faith-based films, often from their subsidiary Affirm Films, including Heaven Is For Real, Miracles from Heaven, War Room, and The Forge, which quietly made nearly $30 million this past fall. Lionsgate, too, has a sideline in distributing Christian movies like Jesus Revolution and I Can Only Imagine. But these movies – at least the bigger-budget, star-laden versions – have been arriving less frequently post-pandemic, and Angel is clearly picking up the slack without as much casting about for which stars might be able to stomach or even enjoy the proselytizing elements.
Angel has also taken that last bit to the next level, not so much in content (there will always be faith-based movies lower-rent and more bonkers than whatever strikes most people as kinda weird) but in a particular marketing technique that got a lot of attention circa Sound of Freedom and has remained in place for subsequent releases like Homestead: Fans of the movie, or the Angel Studios agenda, or character actor Neal McDonough, can purchase tickets online to be gifted to other moviegoers. Are many of these tickets actually claimed? It’s difficult to say, and there were some reports that even showings of the genuinely popular Sound of Freedom may not have been as full as those pay-it-forward sales would indicate. Then again, plenty of Hollywood movies engage in de facto dynamic pricing by booking showings in large-format auditoriums like IMAX that cost more money; is one person willing to pay for two or three Angel Studios tickets all that different from one person paying an extra ten bucks for their Nosferatu ticket to watch it on a nicer screen? Not really. Seems like an arrangement that leaves both the studio and the customer happy.
Nosferatu, by the way, illustrates a popular path for other specialty studios to break through: horror. Did the lack of more adult-oriented options at the multiplex assist the growing hype for Nosferatu and Longlegs, two of 2024’s most surprising box office breakouts? It seems possible; they’re among the highest-grossing 2024 releases without some kind of association with a previously existing IP. Maybe Angel Studios is the more pious version of the arthouse distributor that uses horror as a profit driver to get their movies into some multiplexes and build out their brands. (The difference, of course, is that Angel Studios is faith-based all the way down; they’re not trying to afford Paul Thomas Anderson, here.) It’s all at least partially an offshoot of major studios’ abdication of mid-budget movies, especially dramas and comedies, to streaming.
While the idea that Hollywood is intensely politicized and only makes preachy left-wing message movies is laughable – Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t exactly stumping for socialism – it’s easy to paint them with that brush because there are so few “normal” dramas. Let’s break it down: Going through 2024’s top 100 highest-grossing movies in North America (which doesn’t cover every wide release, but the vast majority of them), about two-dozen could be charitably described as dramas without genre claims, even if some include comedic or romantic elements. Half of those are either faith-based, biographical, or both. (Of the remaining 12, only three were wide releases from a major studio – all Sony, in fact, and mostly bombs. The rest are Amazon’s MGM, Fox’s Searchlight, Universal’s Focus, A24, and Magnolia.) Not all of those 12 were hits, let alone all 24. But anyone who does want to watch an old-fashioned drama may at some point be faced with an Angel Studios movie as an option, and upstarts can make pretty decent coin siloing that audience off into more niche-driven interests. Of course, some Angel movies have thriller elements, but virtue of their relatively low budgets and thematic interests, there’s always going to be some focus on the human-drama angles of their stories, even when they include more traditionally marketable stuff. Angel Studios may not be resurrecting the human drama outright. But they’re making some money while the non-genre genre waits for a miracle.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
