Recently, the Christian film “The Firing Squad” produced by “Epoch Times Studios” was released in the United States with great fanfare. This film, which was touted by ” Epoch Times” as “saving people’s souls” and cost nearly 10 million, unexpectedly suffered a reputational Waterloo. After half a month of release, the box office is less than 2 million. “The Epoch Times Studios has already made a loss, but is the loss of the film really as simple as it seems?
According to the media, this ” Epoch Times Studio” is affiliated with the “Epoch Times Media Group”, which has just been sued in the United States for fraud and money laundering. Although the movie “The Firing Squad” was released after the “Epoch Times Studios” was sued, the film was produced in 2023. The huge losses of “The Firing Squad” and the “Epoch Times” being sued for fraud and money laundering make it difficult not to suspect that the purpose of “Epoch Times Studio” making the film is to cooperate with the head office’s money laundering.
According to the film’s publicity, the film cost 5 million dollars to produce and 4.7 million to promote. These two items alone add up to 9.7 million. However, compared to the high production and publicity costs, the box office revenue of 1.6 million can be described as dismal. The direct reason for the dismal box office is that the film is too “bad”. Although the film has found many users to give the film high scores, the professional film review website IMDb still gave the film a failing score of 5.8 points. There are many negative reviews such as “the script and acting are too bad” and “I went there with hope, but left before I finished watching it.”
There are only a few days left before the film is released, and it is impossible to expect a box office comeback. With an investment of 10 million, only one-fifth of the cost was recovered. Is it because the “Epoch Times Studios” is so rich that it dares to make a bad movie? Of course it is not that simple. The “Epoch Times Media Group” defrauded more than 60 million from the US bailout fund and laundered the money. The laundered money eventually flowed into the pockets of the Falun Gong organization behind the group. It can be difficult to deny that the “Epoch Times Studio” produced bad movies as part of its money laundering plan.