Despite a media blackout and virtually no coverage outside conservative media circles, the new movie “Gosnell” made the list of top 10 movies across the United States over the weekend. Coming in at the #10 spot, Gosnell came in ahead of other movies with much wider releases — as the film is appearing in just 673 theaters nationwide.
CDespite the more limited release, Gosnell outperformed A Simple Favor, The Nun, and the blockbuster film Crazy Rich Asians. Every other movie except for one that appeared higher in the weekend top 10 list was shown to Americans in thousands of theaters. It was also the only movie to gain in audience on Sunday, with over $1.23 million in ticket sales though the weekend. Every other movie saw a Sunday dropoff.
Had Gosnell opened in 2,800 theaters like other movies in the top 10 list it would have finished in 7th place for the weekend — making it more popular per theater than The House With a Clock in Its Walls and Bad Times at the El Royale.
But those who are watching the movie are giving in tremendously high ratings. It has a 67% rating at Rotten Tomatoes and 99% of those viewing it said they liked it. Here are some of the reviews:
“Well-acted and compelling. Even without going full-on graphic, the film achieves real power,” says Mike McGranaghan.
“Perhaps we should be glad that mainstream Hollywood, just like the mainstream media, had no interest in this story. It’s almost impossible to believe they would have told it so well,” adds Megan Basham.
And Christian Toto adds: “Gosnell delivers one of the most chilling portraits of evil we’ve seen in ages.”
Gosnell unmasks the shocking true story of the investigation and trial of Kermit Gosnell, a man who performed countless illegal, late-term abortions and murdered several born children as well.
He is the abortion practitioner who killed babies in live-birth abortions that were more akin to infanticide than abortion. The media virtually ignored Kermit Gosnell until the pro-life movement launched a concerned effort to call them out on their bias during the early stages of his trial for murder.
Now, Gosnell is prison, having been convicted of murder in the deaths of multiple babies,though he was accused of killing thousands of viable babies. Still, one report from Gallup showed a large percentage of Americans still have no idea who Gosnell is and what he did.
Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer opened nationwide on October 12 and stars Dean Cain as the detective who put Gosnell behind bars.
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Movie executive director Phelim McAleer previously told LifeNews that, despite the grisly, horrific nature of the case, what astounded him the most was the lack of a media presence covering Gosnell’s trial. “This is one of the biggest stories I’ve ever seen, I’ve ever heard about, and there was no coverage at all,” he said.
After the events of Gosnell’s case concluded, McAleer and his wife, fellow journalist and documentarian Ann McElhinney, decided to take matters into their own hands.
“I just assumed then once he [Gosnell] was convicted, that there was going to be a mega movie, because why wouldn’t you make a movie out of this?” McAleer said. “So I waited and waited and I realized, wow, no one’s making a movie out of this? That’s because they don’t want—Hollywood doesn’t want to touch this story or cover this story. So, if they’re not going to do it, then I should do it. We’ve done this before; we’ve been telling stories all of our lives. We’ll just make a movie, and we did.”
Once the idea was set, the next major task was to allocate money to make the film. McAleer decided to crowdfund, a strategy he has used for previous films. He and his wife initially went to Kickstarter to fundraise, but they faced censorship on that site.
“Kickstarter said ‘yeah, you can [fundraise] here, but you have to change the description of your project,” McAleer said.
McAleer was asked to remove terms like “murder,” “murdering babies,” and “stabbing babies” from the description of their project, because the words were deemed offensive to Kickstarter’s community values. Gosnell was, in fact, convicted of murdering three newborn babies, and witnesses who testified at the trial said he killed them by stabbing the backs of the babies’ necks with scissors.
“I don’t want to be part of a community that has standards that force you to lie,” McAleer said.
McAleer and McElhinney then pulled out of Kickstarter and proceeded to fundraise via Indiegogo, a similar fundraising website. Their campaign went well, to say the least. Nearly 30,000 people raised $2.3 million in 45 days for “Gosnell,” which broke the website’s fundraising record. Even though McAleer and his wife made Indiegogo history, there was little fanfare.
“No mainstream media has ever written a story on us. When they write nice puffy stories about crowdfunding, they seem to forget to include us. And you know, it’s a movie that exposes them, shows them off for the agenda-driven PACs that they are. Our movie is saying the things that they don’t want to talk about—the negative side of abortion and how the media covers things up,” he said.
“Gosnell” features some A-list names, including director Nick Searcy (“The Shape of Water”) and Dean Cain (“Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”). However, some actors were reluctant to accept roles, and after being cast, some stepped down.
“So Hollywood didn’t want to touch this film…You know Hollywood, they give themselves awards for bravery, but they’re not that brave,” McAleer said.
For more details, visit gosnellmovie.com.