Angel Studios' "Young Washington" pulled in $21 million over the July 4th weekend on a $30 million budget. DC's "Supergirl," which cost $290 million to produce and market, managed $10 million in the same frame.

The Founding Fathers just outgrossed a flying woman in a cape — two to one — on America's 250th birthday weekend.

The numbers are brutal for DC. "Supergirl" opened on June 26th and cratered with a 74-80% second-weekend drop, the kind of freefall that gets studio executives' resumes updated. Meanwhile, "Young Washington" — produced by the same Angel Studios that made "Sound of Freedom" — debuted to more than double the superhero sequel's holiday haul with a fraction of the investment.

Chris Pratt, who recommended the film publicly, called it something the marketing team couldn't have scripted better. "I was actually blown away. The movie is incredible," Pratt said. "Like Braveheart for Americans."

Rotten Tomatoes tells the rest of the story. "Young Washington" sits at 60% with critics and 93% with audiences. That 33-point gap between the professional review class and the people who actually buy tickets has become the most reliable indicator in entertainment. When critics are lukewarm and audiences are electric, you're looking at a movie that committed the unforgivable sin of not checking the right ideological boxes.

As Twitchy noted, the excuses arrived on schedule. One community note attempt tried to explain away the blowout by pointing out that "Supergirl started playing in theaters on June 26th. Most people who want to see it already have." Which is a fascinating way to say your $290 million movie ran out of interested customers in eleven days.

We saw this playbook with "Sound of Freedom" in 2023. CNN floated theories that the film was "created out of moral panics" and hinted at QAnon connections. Rolling Stone's critics savaged it. Audiences made it one of the year's biggest surprises anyway. Angel Studios apparently took notes.

The pattern isn't complicated. Studios spend a quarter-billion dollars on properties nobody asked for, then act confused when audiences choose something that doesn't treat them like ideological patients who need treatment. "Young Washington" didn't have a massive marketing campaign or a built-in franchise. It had George Washington and a $30 million budget.

Hollywood spent $290 million to lose the Fourth of July to a movie about the man who made the Fourth of July possible. Jon Erwin and Angel Studios spent a tenth of that and doubled the take.

Somewhere in a studio boardroom, someone is going to propose that the problem was the release date. It wasn't the release date.