Who Owns The Rights To A Sound Of Freedom Sequel?

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In a summer mostly dominated by heavy budget and box office productions, Sound Of Freedom has been a nice breath of fresh air away from the inevitable never-ending hype around the likes of Barbie and Oppenheimer, amongst a handful of others.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the title, Sound Of Freedom is a story about a federal agent who quits his day-job in pursuit of rescuing a young girl from a group of human-traffickers. The agent puts his life on the line as he embarks into the Columbian jungle to save the girl from dangers that seem worse than death.

The movie itself was only set for a limited theatrical release around the United States. But since the film’s massive success in the US, there has been high demand for a cinematic run across various regions around the world.

Following the films massively extended theatrical run around the globe, the movie has generated a whopping $178 million to date. Beating out the likes of box-office returns such as “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” and “Indiana Jones and The Dial Of Destiny”.

To further emphasize the success that Sound Of Freedom has witnessed throughout the summer, these two box office magnets had a budget of around $300 million apiece. Whereas Sound Of Freedom only had a budget of around $14.5 million.

Presumably, due to the film’s massive success, talks have begun regarding a follow-up sequel that would inevitably witness a global cinematic run from the get-go. But some controversy has sparked up in regard to who actually owns the right to creating such movie.

A representative for Mike Ilitch Jr, an executive producer for the movie, has recently spoken out in an interview that Ilitch signed a deal with Tim Ballard, the anti-human trafficking activist that the film is based around, for life rights. These life rights would inevitably provide Ilitch Jr the ability to produce a movie on such subject.

Had the film found a range of success throughout it’s worldwide run, Ilitch Jr didn’t intend on stopping there. As the producer had ideas of a scripted series and docuseries revolving around Ballard’s various missions to save children from sexual exploitations.

Away from this, the director of the film, Alejandro Monteverde, has recently spoken out and mentioned the fact that he secured Ballard’s life rights whilst the movie was experiencing the screenwriting stage back in 2015.

“There’s definitely a lot of interest to exploring [the subject] a little deeper, because this is just the tip of the iceberg” – Alejandro Monteverde.

Despite the director’s eagerness to see a sequel to Sound Of Freedom produced, a representative for Monteverde also mentioned the fact that the original rights were only to one movie, and no follow-up sequel has originally been discussed. Although talks are being had for a sequel right now, there is currently nothing new to report upon.

As distributor, Angel Studios currently hold the rights to the title “Sound Of Freedom” and could potentially pursue the idea of a spin-off project that doesn’t revolve around the character based on Tim Ballard.

But seeing as though Ballard maintains a personal connection to the lead character in the original movie, this could be a decision that turns audience members heads away from any separate projects.

There is still very much up in the air regarding who owns the rights to a sequel and whether we will even see one actually made. The case has since been described as messy and somewhat unique.