The pro-life film “Unplanned” is garnering huge success at the box office in America, with many viewers coming out of theaters saying their eyes have been opened to just how evil abortion is at the institutional level.
This success comes in spit of a massive and coordinated effort by social media to discourage people from buying tickets. Clearly, that hasn’t worked.
So, how is that this film is a box office hit? Let’s find out.
This all came about after President Donald Trump nominated Brett M. Kavenaugh to the Supreme Court back in July. Since then, the focus on abortion and its regulations has ramped up substantially. Each state is taking a slightly different stand on the issue, and altering their own laws to meet their citizen’s preferences.
As a way to combat the laws being passed by states across the nation to make abortion more accessible, those supporting life have fought back. Just last week, lawmakers in Georgia passed the so-called “heartbeat bill”, implementing the first real limits on the procedure in a long time.
Other ways the pro-life movement is fighting back is through media. “Unplanned” debuted in tells the heart wrenching true story of Abby Johnson, a pro-life activist. This movie is rated “R”, and kids under 17-years-of-age have to be accompanied by a parent. This rating is due to graphic “truth” depicted on the big screen about the act of abortion.
The plot of the Pure Flix Productions film goes through Johnson’s personal journey on the issue. Johnson was a former director of Planned Parenthood. After witnessing a horrific abortion firsthand, she became a voice for the unborn — effectively switching sides entirely.
Though the film wasn’t considered a major release, it was distributed to slightly over one thousand screens. The projected outcome of the film was around $3 million for opening weekend. Many expected the film to fade from public view after that.
On opening weekend, “Unplanned” reached $6.11 million in ticket sales — more than double what they were projected to be. It was actually the third highest grossing movie of the weekend, and even outsold the beloved “Captain Marvel” during that time.
As if finding success as a small conservative film wasn’t hard enough, “Unplanned” promotors ran into a great deal of push back from the left when they tried to get the word out about the film. For example, the film’s Twitter account was shut down for some unknown reason. Also, many broadcast outlets would not allow “Unplanned” to air trailers. Even Lifetime said it would not allow the trailer for the movie to run because of its sensitive nature. It was also blocked by USA Network, The Hallmark Channel, The Cooking Channel, The Food Network, A& E Networks, HGTV, Discovery and the Travel Channel among others.
The Motion Picture Association of America gave “Unplanned” a harsh rating of “R,” due to the clinic scenes as mentioned earlier. However, despite being given a harsh “R” rating, which also hindered Christian networks from advertising the film on both TV and radio stations, it still achieved immense success.
The way this film was handled by the mainstream entertainment industry is just par for the course. The entertainment industry has no problem promoting abortion, women’s rights, LGBT rights — rights for anyone except the unborn. When it comes to that, they will fight with all their might to keep the pro-life message from being told. Thankfully, at least in the case of “Unplanned,” their efforts were unsuccessful.
~ Patriotic Freedom Fighter
