Why Would Disney Shelve a Movie About Human Trafficking?

There are moments when a range of emotions collide within you to create a situation in which you are rendered incapable of speaking or even thinking. It has not happened often in my life, but I remember the last time it happened. It was in Cambodia.

I was on a human trafficking awareness mission trip with a church group. We were there to learn more about the issue and about what an NGO was doing to rescue trafficked children and help them restore their lives. I won’t name the organization. It does good work and does not deserve to be placed on some cancel list by a group of partisan hacks. We had been in the country for several days and had toured Tuol Sleng, one of the sites of the killing fields in the country. One day we arrived at the compound where the girls were housed and rehabilitated. There they are treated for illness, disease, and injuries, and given counseling and job training. Normally, one associates human trafficking with “ladies of the night,” or older teens. I was not ready to see the girls of all ages who had found refuge there. Some were as young as four or five. Little girls. That was a bit too much to handle, I admit. I said to one of the people in charge that surely children so young could not have been sold for sex. She informed me that they had.

At that moment I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to deck someone. I turned away, sobbing and at the same time shaking with rage.

Later, I met another girl, all of twelve. She had been trafficked for slave labor at an early age. She was too small and too weak to work. Her captors injected her with a substance that destroyed her near-muscular systems. She was then placed on a blanket with a cup to beg. When she was rescued she was given a wheelchair. She died in that wheelchair, decades before her time.

Being a writer, I was taking notes throughout the trip, which I later turned into a book. The book stumbled along on Amazon for a while, but nobody read it so I took it off the site. Toward the end of the trip, we were in Siem Reap, which is the home of Angkor Wat and a very active human trafficking industry. I was told by another member of the organization that if I really wanted something to write about, I should walk the streets of Siem Reap after dark. I did, with my wife and one of our guides following at a distance. The first girl emerged from a doorway. She could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen. She was wearing a cocktail dress and heavy makeup. She looked at me and said, “You be with me tonight?'” I declined and I remember that she laughed as I hurried away. It was one of the saddest sounds I had ever heard. I had gone about ten steps when the second girl appeared. She was not wearing anything special. She looked like she had just come from soccer practice. She may have been anywhere from twelve to fourteen. She didn’t say a word. She just smile sweetly and made a grab for my crotch. By the time I had spun around to make an escape and reached the end of the block, I had seen enough.

How did these girls end up in these situations? In Cambodia, they may be taken. They may be sold by their families, or they may be lured into the trap by the promise of a good-paying job in the city. Once in the hands of the traffickers, their names may be replaced by numbers. They are beaten and abused and often addicted to drugs to keep them dependent on their pimp.

There is another man who at one time had also seen enough. His name is Tim Ballard. He is the CEO of Operation Underground Railroad. He is a former government agent who has taken it upon himself to rescue as many children as possible from the incinerator that is the trafficking industry. Ballard’s story has been turned into a movie: Sound of Freedom.

The film is being released by Angel Studios, and iit has not been an easy ride. According to The Mix, studio president Jordan Harmon commented, “This film has been through the wringer. It was originally done by — Fox was going to be the distributor back in the day…Fox was originally going to distribute it. Then Disney buys Fox and for whatever reason Disney shelves it.” It took Harmon and his company a year to negotiate with Disney to get the rights back to Sound of Freedom. And this was after the film had been made. Harmon told director Alejandro Monteverde:

“I think you or Eduardo told me when we were meeting for the first time, one of you said, ‘God has his timing.’ Like He knew when this film was supposed to come out and so we’re grateful that we get to be a part of it with Angel Studios’ perspective. It’s very rare for a film to be shot four or five years ago and it doesn’t come out for four or five years.

Monteverde commented, “To me, this is perfect timing. I do believe if this movie would come out earlier I don’t think the audience was ready. Right now, there is unfortunately, there’s advertisement for this film, but on the wrong side. Every day there is these atrocities happening on the news everywhere. Children trafficked. Sexually abused children all over.” Perhaps Harmon and Monteverde are right, and this is God’s timing. Or it could very well be that God stepped in because Disney had decided to let the film gather dust someplace, rather than releasing it. There are times when God will refuse to let the choices of men rule the day. His hand is on things, even if it may be indiscernible to us.

Of course, this raises the question as to why Disney decided to shelve the film in the first place. Disney has an agenda, of course. There is no denying that. Also, Ballard is friends with many on the right. But my money is not on the idea Disney wanted to suppress the film. I think Disney didn’t care. Sound of Freedom wasn’t going to be a moneymaker for the company. It wasn’t as enticing as a leftist reboot of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, or The Little Mermaid. It didn’t fit the narrative, would have made shareholders and audiences uncomfortable, and would not have contributed to the bottom line. LGBTQ equals more ESG points. Combating human trafficking? Not so much. Disney just didn’t give a damn.

I know it can seem daunting and discouraging to scroll through the headlines every day. Sometimes it seems that there is nothing we can do against such naked avarice, ambition, rage, and, yes, perversion. Evil has had quite a head start on us. And on our own, we can do nothing to turn the tide. But by standing together, we can.

Sound of Freedom opens the week of July 4th. To find a screening near you, click here.