What this Year's Box Office Can Tell Us about Harris v. Trump
How can millions and millions of voters be supporting a convicted fraudster who wants to put fringe conspiracy nut RFK Jr. in charge of “health and women’s health”, promises to “protect women whether the women like it or not” and touts an economic plan that Nobel-prize-winning economists say will completely backfire?
While we haven’t seen a film like “The Passion of the Christ” reach the top five at the box office as it did in 2004, the year George W. Bush won a second term (it hit #3, earning a startling $370 million domestically), there is a surprising preponderance of right-wing box-office hits in 2024, from faith-based dramas to conservative agit-prop docs to evangelical retellings about the life of Jesus Christ and Ronald Reagan. The right-wing media ecosystem is big and getting bigger every day, well beyond the bullhorns of Fox News and Elon Musk’s X.
“Reagan,” a faith-based hagiographic bio-pic starring Dennis Quaid as the former President and released by a company called ShowBiz Direct, earned a whopping $30 million at the box office (currently ranked #43 this year), well above films such as “Monkey Man” and “Poor Things.”
On one mid-September weekend, there were four films in the box office Top Ten specifically made to appeal to Christian conservatives and Trump acolytes. Just above “Reagan” was the proudly racist anti-DEI documentary “Am I Racist?” which made $4.7 million, one of the the biggest theatrical openings for a documentary in years. It went on to earn a total of $12.3 million. The last time a documentary earned more than $12 million in theaters was 2018 (the year of “Free Solo,” “RBG,” and “Three Identical Strangers”).
Other top grossers included that week included the faith-based inspirational film “The Forge” (which went on to earn $29 million), and “God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust,” a political drama that proselytizes a vision of America without the Constitutional separation of Church and State (total $3.27 million), released by Fathom Events, one of the most prolific theatrical purveyors of right-wing content. One of Fathom’s biggest releases this year, in fact, is a historical TV drama about the life of Jesus called “The Chosen,” whose most recent episodes earned some $10 million over three weeks in release. There are other multi-million-dollar hits, from companies such as Angel Studios—“Cabrini” ($19 million), “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot” ($11 million) and SDG Releasing (which released “Am I Racist?” and Dinesh D’Souza’s latest pro-Trump doc “Vindicating Trump”—that show a formidable fan-base for right-wing entertainment, one that continues to grow.
These are all extremely significantly box-office numbers for independent films in 2024. Consider the struggles of so many indies to break through theatrically—even hitting a couple million dollars—and it puts these numbers in perspective. In stories of independent film’s lukewarm comeback this year, observers cite IFC Films’ release of “Last Night with the Devil,” which earned $10 million. That’s pretty great, but it’s no “Reagan.”
I’m not saying that box office success translates to political will, but I think a lot of the industry doesn’t realize how successful these films are relative to other non-Hollywood movies, and how big of an audience these films have. While conventional indie distributors lament the challenges of the independent film business, conservatives are celebrating a surge that has continued to grow over the last several years.
In 2018, I spoke with Fathom CEO Ray Nutt for Indiewire and he told me their one-night-only nonfiction screenings increased a staggering 185% over the previous year, driven by faith-based and evangelical titles. “I think what’s happening is that Fathom fills a void for these documentary filmmakers, who don’t want a conventional theatrical release or can’t get one,” said Nutt, who noted that faith-based events had “taken off.”
Several years prior, I looked at the rise of Christian content-making in Hollywood in an article for the Village Voice post-”Passion of the Christ,” and it was clear even then that the right-wing demographic was becoming more important than ever before.
"The audience and network for attracting and organizing said audience is very much there and the apparatus, from marketers to grassroots teams, has gotten way more developed and sophisticated," the late great marketing executive Mark Urman told me at the time.
If those of us on the Left think Trump and his batshit band of conspiracists, xenophobes, fascists, and White Supremacists are insane, driving many of us to vote this election season, consider what’s driving so many of these conservative voters on the Right to support him: It’s God. And if you’re a believer, God is a pretty convincing force. Look at the success of many of these right-wing movies this year: They are an inspired propagandistic amalgam of Jesus and politics that continue to help frame Trump’s candidacy as a specifically evangelical one. And there is enormous power in that. Will it be enough for him to win?
Considering the year’s most successful film “Inside Out 2” (which earned $652 million, more than any of these films combined) has withstood attacks from extremist Christians for focusing on a character who many claim is nonbinary, maybe there’s still hope for us all.
And the fight continues: Go to Swingleft.org or Mobilize.us for events near you.
These are not the tea leaves I want to read today, but I recognize they shouldn't be ignored either. The trades and the film industry always want to just see the emperor's new clothes.
really interesting read. the Angel Studios story is definitely being covered but these other films, especially "Am I a Racist?" its the first time I'm reading about their success. 12.3m is quite a number. I wonder if the 70m+ audience for indie film in the USA captured in Keri Putnam's recent research also captures this audience base. I'm working on a release of a film called True Believer that's for the growing group of people beginning to be disillusioned by what they hear at church and will be curious if our film can capture some of the faith based audience in any way. It's a film that challenges the status quo of the faith community without demonizing and isn't made for people whose minds are already changed.