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Sound of Freedom beat the final Indiana Jones movie at the box office, albeit through a ticket multipurchase scheme, and the idea that Hollywood might lose its power is unthinkable to them. The "need" is to regain control of a public narrative of mainstream moral superiority over Christians, and nothing hurts Christians in the news like the "hypocrisy" of a single Christian falling like Samson to a woman's wiles.
That's the Culture Total War mentality: destroy all monuments and great works the other side might conceivably claim as theirs, and salt the earth, from football and beer all the way down to knitting forums.
One of the guys from Angel Studios is on this podcast: https://www.thebulwark.com/podcast-episode/how-2023s-oddest-box-office-hit-paid-it-forward/
He claims that under the "Pay it Forward" ticket scheme, the tickets aren't counted as "box office" until a ticket is claimed and used to attend a screening. That is, the theaters do not see the purchase of the ticket until it is actually used. If true, I don't see how that is any less legit than the buy-it-yourself ticket model. Attendance is attendance.
It might say something interesting about the distribution of interest in the movie: some people were sufficiently interested to buy multiple tickets and contribute more towards the movie's success than they had to, and some people may not been sufficiently motivated to see it without a free ticket (although i don't know a lot about how you get a free ticket and it's possible ticket recipients would have seen the movie anyway)
I'm not sure that's negative towards the movie, though: having some people be super excited about your movie isn't uncommon, and it's kind of interesting that we don't see more of this.
Imagine a campaign where feminists and allies subsidize a movie that they think portays women well, to try and get more moviegoers to explore along those lines. Kind of terrifying in what it'll do to movie creator incentives in a Toxoplasma of Rage way, but i don't think people are making a strategic decision not to do it on those grounds.
We will definitely see a lot more of it now that there's been such an effective proof of concept.
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