2016 Obama’s America free on demand: Anti-Obama movie used as political tool?
2016 Obama’s America, Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan’s anti-Obama documentary, has been derided by the vast majority of movie critics. Even so, it’s apparently perceived by some as an effective presidential campaign tool. Armstrong Cable, which operates in six states including the “swing state” of Ohio, is offering D’Souza and Sullivan’s 2016 movie free of charge to all its on-demand subscribers, reports Judd Legum in Think Progress.
In the same article, Legum explains that Armstrong Cable’s Chairman of the Board Jay Sedwick donated “the maximum $5,000 to Mitt Romney’s campaign and an additional $25,000 to the Republican National Committee.” And an Armstrong executive told the Pittsburgh City Paper that “this is the first time the cable provider has offered such a deal for a recently released feature film.”
Armstrong Cable claims there are going to be more such freebies in the near future, so as to encourage viewers to buy their premium on-demand offerings. Perhaps Atlas Shrugged: Part IIis next?
2016 movie a sleeper hit
A sleeper hit this past summer, 2016 Obama’s America is the second most successful political documentary at the North American box office, trailing (by a huge margin) only Michael Moore’s 2004 blockbuster Fahrenheit 9/11. (At the worldwide box office, 2016 Obama’s America is also trailing quite a few other political titles – e.g., Sicko, An Inconvenient Truth.)
Anti-Iraq War documentaries faced distribution hurdles in a previous election year
Curiously, back in 2004, another election year in the United States, Fahrenheit 9/11 almost went unreleased, as Disney’s Michael Eisner prevented subsidiary Miramax from distributing the anti-Iraq War, anti-George W. Bush documentary in the U.S. Eventually, IFC Films and Lionsgate jointly released Fahrenheit 9/11 in North America.
Also in 2004, Warner Bros. declined to include David O. Russell’s anti-Iraq War documentary Soldiers Pay on their DVD rerelease of Russell’s Iraq-set feature The Three Kings. The studio’s justification was that Soldiers Pay was a “personal political statement” that, if distributed by the studio, could violate U.S. election laws. Cinema Libre eventually released Russell’s documentary along with Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered: The War on Iraq.
2016 Obama’s America George Obama photo: Rocky Mountain Pictures.