Fahrenheit 2012: Political Films' Profit Potential

It’s 2016, and the skies over America’s heartland have turned tornado dark, seemingly for good. The economy has suffered a total collapse and Americans are hungry and fearful. Anarchy reigns in some urban areas. Ever since President Obama, deep into his second term, withdrew U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, the whole of the Middle East has fallen under the control of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The entire region, in fact, has been forged together to form a “United States of Islam,” where jihadists train en masse and leaders have cut the flow of oil to the West. Because the U.S. has dismantled its atomic arsenal, the country idly stood by as Iranian operatives detonated a nuclear bomb in Israel, triggering World War III.

Such is the future in 2016: Obama’s America, which hit theaters in July. Produced on a modest $2.5 million budget, it’s amassed at least $32 million at the box office, according to Rocky Mountain Pictures, the film’s distributor. Although it may sound like the Hollywood adaptation of a dystopian, sci-fi graphic novel, 2016: Obama’s America ranks as the second-highest-grossing political documentary of all time in the U.S. That’s thanks to a vast, conservative-minded bloc of moviegoers whom producers, filmmakers, and studios are racing to reach before they stream into voting booths in early November.