‘Young Washington’ Earns an Impressive CinemaScore on July 4 Weekend, and Angel Studios Has Another Hit on Its Hands

Angel Studios has done it again. ‘Young Washington,’ the epic historical drama telling the origin story of America’s first president, has earned an A CinemaScore from opening-day audiences, arriving just in time for Independence Day weekend and confirming that the studio’s model of faith-forward crowd-pleasing cinema continues to find its audience with reliable consistency.

The film, directed by Jon Erwin and released on July 3, follows a young George Washington from the death of his father through his formative experiences on the battlefields of the French and Indian War. William Franklyn-Miller stars as the titular character, alongside Mary-Louise Parker, Kelsey Grammer, Andy Serkis, and Ben Kingsley.

The story traces how a colonial surveyor denied a formal British Army commission found himself thrust into the center of a global conflict that would forge the leader the country would later come to know.

The film premiered at the Tribeca Festival on June 13 before its wide theatrical release. In the United States and Canada, the film was projected to gross around $15 million in its opening weekend, a modest but commercially viable target for an independently distributed historical film opening opposite ‘Minions and Monsters’ and with ‘Toy Story 5’ still pulling significant family audiences from the market.

The A CinemaScore is the key data point Angel Studios will be amplifying heading into the weekend’s second and third days. Critics were more divided, with the film sitting at 58% on Rotten Tomatoes from 36 reviews, but the gap between press reception and audience response is one Angel Studios has navigated successfully before, most notably with ‘Sound of Freedom’ and ‘His Only Son.’

Erwin, who previously directed ‘Jesus Revolution’ and ‘American Underdog,’ has become one of the most reliable directors in faith-based and patriotic cinema over the past several years. The film carries a PG-13 rating for sequences of strong war violence and some bloody images, a tonal choice that suggests Erwin was prioritizing historical authenticity alongside its inspirational framing.

The timing of the release is anything but accidental. Fandango offered a $5 ticket promotion with code AMERICA250 for Fourth of July screenings, directly tying the film’s release to the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations and reinforcing the event-style positioning that Angel Studios pioneered with earlier releases. That kind of grassroots promotional strategy, combined with a strong audience score, is exactly the formula the studio has used to turn modest projections into overperforming theatrical runs before.

The real test for ‘Young Washington’ will be its second weekend hold. Angel Studios films have historically benefited from strong church group attendance and community screenings in the days and weeks following opening weekend, patterns that tend to produce dramatically smaller drops than the industry average and push final domestic totals well beyond what early projections would suggest.

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