The anti-Obama movie “2016: Obama’s America” is emerging as an out-of-nowhere hit in the documentary category.
The Rocky Mountain Pictures release premiered at one theater in Houston July 13 and hefty box office from a small start supported an ever-wider release in later weeks–now at 1,800 locations. While that trajectory is impressive, 2,000+ locations on opening weekend is the norm for major-studio releases.
Box office stands at $13.1 million as of Aug. 30 and still climbing after 49 days in release. The New York Post reports the film cost just $2.5 million to make. “2016: Obama’s America: has turned into quite the sleeper hit,” writes Phil Contrino of Boxoffice.com.
In general, $3 million is a hit by standards for non-nature documentaries though Michael Moore’s 2004 Iraq war critique “Fahrenheit 9/11” rolled up a stratospheric $119.1 million in domestic box office. That’s the highest grossing documentary of all time, including nature docus.
According to Boxofficemojo.com, “2016: Obama’s America” ranked #46 nationally based on total box office for its July 13-15 weekend and climbed to #7 by the weekend of Aug. 24-26. In daily BO since then, the sleeper hit runs #2 or #3 on weekdays beating out newer releases.
In a low-key presentation, the filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who is a conservative commentator, builds his case in the PG-rated movie that President Obama is driven by anti-colonial and anti-wealth ideology. The movie serves up Obama background cues, including tidbits plucked from Obama’s autobiography whose title “Dreams From My Father.” D’Souza weaves his own life story into the tale—he is a person of color and has an Ivy League university background, like Obama. The movie’s producer—Gerald Molen—won an Oscar for producing “Schindler’s List.”
The movie is critical of Obama but does not have an angry tone. The movie’s key copy line “Love Him. Hate Him. You Don’t Know Him” attempts to rope in Obama supporters and those who are neutral by suggesting the documentary is simply revealing rather than dogmatic. So far, there are no indications this is a crossover hit drawing Obama supporters, unlike the crossover and bombastic “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Reviews are mixed with Variety’s Joe Leydon sniffing “‘breathtakingly anti-America’ is only one of the epithets tossed about like so much confetti.”
A press release from the film suggests that “2016: Obama’s America” suffered early on from a lack of cinema industry support. “The stunning success of this film was not without obstacles however,” says the PR dated Aug. 26. “Earlier in the week, several media outlets reported that fans searching for the film at popular film sites found that a simple search for the film yielded no results and the film was excluded from a number of film guides published in newspapers across the country.”
Will “2016: Obama’s America” influence the election? One sign it won’t is that box office sensation “Fahrenheit 9/11” hammered then-President Bush, who nonetheless won re-election.
But that’s still an open question. “2016: Obama’s America” is pulling particularly big box office in some election battleground locations—Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Virginia—according to BO tracker Rentrak. Another anti-Obama documentary – “The Hope and the Change” examining regrets of Obama voters from 2008–is getting attention by pundits, though has no distributor.
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