While the title of the story is interesting, this tidbit was buried further down:
Sound of Freedom" surprised critics by smashing box office projections, grossing more than $150 million so far. The film had a $14.5 million budget. Social media users have suggested that the film is using "astroturfing," a practice of buying up hundreds of tickets to make theaters appear sold out, to inflate its success.
Several TikToks have gone viral showing "Sound of Freedom" theaters that were supposedly sold out completely empty once the movie begins.
That’s how a ton of politicians “NYT best sellers” books are done. They’ll use campaign funds to buy up a ton of books and then give them out for free at rallies and shit.
They're also asking people who do see it to "donate" an extra ticket's worth of money to them to supposedly allow someone else to see it. The grift never ends.
Surprised that only one of them has been rooted out so far. The whole movement is projection and deflection. There's a serious problem of child abuse in right wing culture that they're not willing to taking about.
They had a pay it forward program to buy others tickets so that they could see it to spread the message. It's a great marketing strategy for the studio to have an inflated sense of how important the movie is.
It's not. The media keeps wanting to make it so. There's nothing Qanon about it. Jim Caviezel is a proponent of Qanon conspiracies, and that's its only connection.
A lot of the cast and crew and people who endorsed the movie are very into the whole Qanon thing, including Tim Ballard, the real guy the movie is about. The movie itself doesn't actually promote any of that, though, (or at least, not that I could tell) and a good chunk is based on a real sting operation. There's a lot of fiction, as is the case with most 'based on a true story' movies, though. And I haven't checked, but I'm kind of suspicious of the charity they encourage you to donate to during the credits.