Dennis Quaid’s Poll Win Backs Reagan’s Second Theater Run

Dennis Quaid took 39 percent in a 642-person poll asking which actor best captured Ronald Reagan on screen. The ranking, paid for by the Dallas nonprofit Foundations of Freedom, arrives as a director’s cut of his 2024 biopic is due in about 600 theaters on Sept. 25.

Jeff Daniels, who played Reagan this summer in Angel Studios’ Reykjavik drama The Brink of War, finished second at 16 percent. The survey is small. The theatrical bet it is meant to serve is not.

Dennis Quaid Takes 39 Percent in a New Poll

Symphony Technology Group fielded the questions on Aug. 24 and 25 for Foundations of Freedom. Respondents were asked a simple thing: which actor best captured the 40th president. Quaid’s lead was not close. His share was more than double Daniels, and more than triple anyone else in the Reagan-only field.

THE REAGAN ACTOR RANKING

The same 642 people also picked a favorite filmed president across the whole office, not only Reagan. Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln led that question at 27 percent. Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum took 14 percent. Quaid’s Reagan placed third at 11 percent. He is the only Republican portrayal that showed up twice in that broader top 10, with Daniels close behind him.

So the “nation’s favorite Reagan” headline is true on the narrow question and thinner on the wide one. Both results come from one sample. Both dropped as the rerelease campaign was already in motion.

Who Commissioned the Reagan Actor Ranking?

Foundations of Freedom is not a Hollywood studio shop. It is a Dallas 501(c)(3), EIN 85-2893542, formed around 2020, and its own filings describe a civil-liberties mission: advance the values in the U.S. Constitution and connect people who share them. CEO Dave Dias, named on the Dallas nonprofit’s tax filings, framed the survey as civic memory work.

Movies are an important part of telling the story of who we are and there have been some fine portrayals of American presidents over the years.

Dave Dias, CEO, Foundations of Freedom

That is a fair mission statement. It is also useful copy for a film that needs bodies in seats on Sept. 25. The group’s NTEE coding sits in civil liberties and speech, the same neighborhood as the production’s running complaint that Facebook, YouTube, and even Bank of America squeezed the original campaign. A 642-person sample is not a national likely-voter poll. It is large enough to mint a press release, and small enough to move on a schedule.

Producer Mark Joseph has said the core audience for Reagan is hard to capture in ordinary movie tracking because those viewers are not typical moviegoers. A nonprofit-branded survey that asks people to pick a Reagan, then lands in the same news cycle as a director’s cut, solves a different problem than Nielsen. It gives the rerelease a scoreboard.

Jeff Daniels, James Brolin and the Rest of the Field

Daniels had the freshest footage. The Brink of War, written and directed by Michael Russell Gunn, opened Aug. 14 and confines itself to the 1986 Reykjavik summit. Daniels plays Reagan opposite Jared Harris as Mikhail Gorbachev and J.K. Simmons as Secretary of State George Shultz. The production shot inside Höfði, the house used for the real talks, and Daniels sat in the chair Reagan used. Sixteen percent for a two-hour negotiation film, against a two-year-old biopic with a rerelease machine behind it, is not a collapse. It is a distant second.

James Brolin and Alan Rickman tied at 12 percent. Brolin’s 2003 miniseries The Reagans was built at CBS, then moved to Showtime after a fight with conservatives over tone, including the handling of AIDS in the 1980s. Joseph later called that project insulting. Rickman’s Reagan in The Butler is a supporting turn inside a White House-staff story, not a cradle-to-Gorbachev biopic, and it still matched Brolin.

The rest of the list is a museum of Reagan-adjacent TV. Bruce Campbell’s 8 percent for Fargo, Richard Crenna’s 5 percent for The Day Reagan Was Shot, Tim Matheson’s 3 percent for Killing Reagan, and Robert Beatty’s 1 percent for Breakthrough at Reykjavik are the long tail. David Henrie, who plays the younger Reagan in Quaid’s film, took 4 percent, which means Joseph’s movie occupies two slots. The poll is, in part, a family photo of the same production.

Ticket Buyers Never Followed the Critics

Quaid’s film opened wide on Aug. 30, 2024, from ShowBiz Direct, directed by Sean McNamara and written by Howard Klausner, with Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan and Jon Voight as a KGB narrator, Viktor Petrovich. It is based on Paul Kengor’s book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. Joseph had been trying to get a version of it made for years; Nicolas Cage agreed to play Reagan at one point, then backed out. Quaid took the role after a visit to the Reagan Ranch, where a replica cowboy hat and denim jacket did some of the converting.

Paying crowds liked what they saw. CinemaScore issued an A. Rotten Tomatoes lists a 98 percent audience score on more than 5,000 verified ratings. Critics did not follow. Sixty-nine reviews sit on the Tomatometer, and the site’s consensus is blunt: the movie admires the man and flattens him into caricature. Quaid later joked that the split was the largest gap in cinema history between critics and audiences. He was selling a line. The split was real.

THE FIRST THEATRICAL RUN

• Opening weekend: $7,650,720 after the Aug. 30, 2024 wide release.
• Domestic gross: $30,047,417, almost the entire box office.
• Worldwide total: a worldwide take of $30,107,173, with $59,756 overseas.
• Budget: $25 million before prints, ads, and the long road to DVD.

Those theatrical numbers cleared the production budget on paper and did not cover a full studio-style marketing load. International was a rounding error. Digital arrived Oct. 15, 2024, and Lionsgate later handled discs. Joseph has said the film doubled some official first-weekend forecasts because the usual tracking missed the crowd that actually showed up. The director’s cut is an attempt to find that crowd again, in rooms, with new footage as the excuse.

What the Director’s Cut Puts Back on Screen

McNamara has said the first assembly ran over three hours and had to be cut to the scripted film, which clocks 2 hours 21 minutes. The new version adds about 10 minutes. He has also said a lot of the restored material is humor: Reagan opening meetings with a joke, self-deprecation that did not survive the first trim. The clip the campaign has pushed hardest is not a joke. It is a 1980 campaign line the original release left on the floor because 2024 was an election year.

In the restored scene, Quaid’s Reagan speaks to the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO: “You and your forebearers helped build this nation. Now help us rebuild it. And together, we will make America great again.” McNamara has said Reagan used the slogan in 1980 and repeated it in the speech just before he was shot, and that presidents of both parties have used some version of the phrase.

In the middle of a divisive election season when we released the movie, we made the decision to leave out a moment that might have been mistaken for electioneering. But in this special year of celebration, we are putting back in the phrase which has been uttered by presidents of both parties and which was used as Reagan’s campaign slogan in 1980 and which he repeated in the speech just before he was shot.

Sean McNamara, director, on the restored campaign line

WHAT THE NEW CUT ADDS

• Runtime: About 10 minutes of footage that did not play in 2024, drawn from an assembly McNamara has described as more than three hours.
• The AFL-CIO line: The “make America great again” passage from the 1980 campaign, held back last time so it would not read as electioneering.
• Humor: Extra scenes of Reagan using jokes and self-deprecation, which McNamara has said he fought to keep.
• Festival run: Audience Choice and Best Narrative Feature at the Anthem Film Festival in Las Vegas, ahead of the fall dates.

Joseph’s own statement on the extended version is the America 250 pitch in one breath. “This extended version allows us to further explore key moments in President Reagan’s journey and share them with audiences at a time when the country is reflecting on its own history and future,” he said. An alternate ending exists in other material tied to the production and is not part of this cut. The 10 minutes are additive, not a rewrite of the last reel.

About 600 Theaters Get a Second Look

Joseph has said the director’s cut is scheduled for about 600 theaters on Sept. 25, timed to the 250th anniversary of the United States. The official site puts the director’s cut back on the big screen and asks viewers to demand it locally. A July preview in a Dayton luxury cinema, one of a dozen early dates, had to move from a house the staff sized for 75 people into a 150-seat auditorium after walk-ups filled the room, according to theater representative Tyler Couch. That is one Friday in Ohio. The September map is the real test.

The campaign around those 600 rooms has been a grind of podcast clips, not a viral argument about acting. The official account has spent September posting interviews with Quaid, McNamara, Joseph, and a long tail of co-stars and musicians. The poll ranking did not catch fire there. The ad fight did. Joseph said YouTube treated promotions for his Making Reagan series, including talks with Kathie Lee Gifford, Tanya Tucker, Gene Simmons, and John Hinckley Jr., as election ads and blocked boosts, with no appeal. YouTube’s stated grounds were officeholder references and, on the Simmons episode, profanity. He has described similar limits on Facebook. The film’s own site says Bank of America shut down an account during production.

“We have no idea why YouTube is seeking to suppress conversations with newsmakers like John Hinckley and entertainers like Kathie Lee Gifford, Tanya Tucker and some of our actors,” Joseph said. “These are some of the least political people I know and yet half of our videos are not being allowed to be boosted.” That complaint is now part of the sell. So is the hat. Joseph has described a replica of Reagan’s cowboy hat as the prop that helped Quaid lock the walk and the voice, the same object the ranch visit was built around.

Dennis Quaid talks about when he was offered the part of Ronald Reagan.

REAGAN: The Director’s Cut in theaters on September 25th.

Own your copy of the REAGAN Movie now on DVD, Blu-Ray, Amazon and Apple TV. pic.twitter.com/np56fZ0Rom

— Reagan The Movie (@ReaganMovie) September 1, 2026

THE ROAD BACK TO THEATERS

1. August 30, 2024: Reagan opens wide, takes $7,650,720 in its first weekend, and finishes with $30,047,417 domestic.
2. October 15, 2024: The original cut hits digital, with discs following through Lionsgate.
3. Summer 2026: The director’s cut plays Anthem in Las Vegas and a handful of preview cities, including the overflow night in Dayton.
4. August 24-25, 2026: Symphony Technology Group fields the 642-person survey for Foundations of Freedom.
5. September 25, 2026: The 10-minute longer cut is due in about 600 theaters, with Lionsgate expected to take the extended version to digital, Blu-ray, and DVD after the limited run.

Readers who want a seat can find theaters showing the new cut through the production’s ticket page. The poll cannot fill those rooms. It can only tell a certain audience that the actor they already liked still sits at the top of a list someone paid to run. Whether 600 theaters turn that into a second opening night is the wager Joseph is placing, 10 minutes and one restored campaign line at a time.