A spiritual successor to last summer’s smash hit Sound of Freedom, by the same studio, hopes to replicate its predecessor’s appeal.
Last summer, Sound of Freedom took the world by storm with a story that raised awareness about child-trafficking. This Fourth of July, Angel Studios hopes to capitalize on that breakout hit’s success with its latest child-centric film.
Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot, directed and co-written by Joshua Weigel, tells the real-life story of a Baptist pastor and his wife who are leading their rural, black church in adopting the most vulnerable kids from the local foster-care system. Twenty-two families in the small town of Possum Trot, Texas, adopted 77 children, and by the film’s end, no more children needed to be adopted within a 100-mile radius of Possum Trot. Sound of Freedom provided a glimpse into the horrors of child-trafficking; Sound of Hope gives audiences hope for another kind of lost child.
Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon told National Review he considers the pair of movies an “anthology” focused on saving children. Despite their vastly different genres — Sound of Freedom is an action-thriller, and Sound of Hope a faith-based drama — they share a connective tissue that binds their messages.
Harmon believes the new film could reach the heights of financial success and audience praise that the previous one garnered last July 4. Sound of Freedom made $250 million at the worldwide box office and received an impressive 99 percent audience score on critique-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, though the critics’ score dropped to 57 percent because mainstream-media outlets believed the film’s depiction of sex-trafficking was inaccurate and sensationalized. Nonetheless, it captured lightning in a bottle.
Angel anticipates Sound of Hope will be a big box-office and critical success, too, in part because it tackles a problem more tangible than child-trafficking: the national foster crisis. Positive word-of-mouth for Sound of Hope has already spread quickly following its advanced Juneteenth screenings.
Early reviews on Rotten Tomatoes suggest that both religious and secular publications agree with Harmon’s description of the movie as an “amazing experience.” Christian news magazine World wrote that the story “portrays authentic faith” while never feeling “preachy,” and online entertainment website Film Threat called it a “heavy message-based movie” that is both “enjoyable and educational.”
While Sound of Hope is a Christian movie that appeals to conservative sensibilities, Harmon hopes it doesn’t get pigeonholed into the “faith-based” or “conservative” labels. Rather, he wants people to get lost in a compelling story.
“Fifty years ago, there was no distinction. There was no such thing as conservative or faith-based. You’d watch a movie in the theater, and faith was just part of it,” he said. “The most important thing is not that it’s presented well as a faith-based movie. It’s just a great story, and all the best stories have faith as part of their foundation.”
And Sound of Hope does have a great story. It skillfully depicts the emotional turmoil that foster kids experience and does so without shying away from those uncomfortable moments. One teenage girl in particular, Terri (played by Diaana Babnicova), is the most traumatized character, and her coping mechanism is to act like a cat. Though her adoptive father helps her break this habit, she continues struggling to trust her new family and can’t comprehend that someone actually loves her now. A lesser filmmaker might have glossed over these painful realities; Weigel leans into them.
It remains to be seen how much money Sound of Hope pulls in on opening weekend and in the weeks to come. It would be hard to capture Sound of Freedom’s lightning in a bottle twice, and the second entry in this “anthology” may not be quite as entertaining or gripping as Sound of Freedom.
But the focus on something more familiar to most people’s lives can be inspiring. “I’ve heard people say it’s the most impactful film they’ve ever seen in their life” or this year, said Harmon, who attended several sold-out screenings prior to the official release date. Many also leave the theater, he said, wondering what they can do next.
One obvious answer: consider becoming foster or adoptive parents themselves. It’s just one way Sound of Hope could become, like its predecessor, not just a movie but a cultural phenomenon.
