Last Tuesday saw another 4th of July for the history books. While some holidays can mark up theater attendance, Independence Day can be a toss up for cinema revenue. This July 4th saw a competition between two movies, and one that not many would have anticipated: Disney’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, and independent film Sound Of Freedom.
As Deadline reports, this is an unusual anomaly at the box office. A tentpole film from major distributor going up against an independent title, with both of them neck and neck for the whole day. Coming from Angel Studios, Sound Of Freedom is the second movie from the company to utilize a crowdfunding technology, Pay It Forward. The first to use it was His Only Son, which came out earlier this year. The idea behind it is to rally moviegoers to buy tickets for other people.
While Sound Of Freedom is based on real events, the box office gross wouldn’t reflect that. Similar titles have capped off their release weekend with a much smaller total, this one found a $14 million opening day alone, not accounting for the days following.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny found itself $11 million in the search for Archimedes’ dial, coming very close to the total that Freedom scooped up.
Going into the weekend, Insidious: The Red Door comes to the big screen. The overall gross for the Insidious films is $542.7 million, with Insidious Chapter 2 performing the best in it’s first weekend, with $40.2 million.
The weekend will no doubt see another stand-off between Indy and Freedom, with the potential for Insidious to now throw its hat into the ring.
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