The $5 Million Bet Behind Run Hide Fight Infidels

Run Hide Fight: Infidels arrived on DailyWire+ on September 16 as a $5 million campus shootout with Jonathan Majors as a retired Delta Force captain. Writer-director Kyle Rankin and producer Dallas Sonnier are betting that Islamic terrorists as the villains, plus a send-up of a pro-Palestine encampment, will sell a sequel the big studios would not shoot.

Rankin said he is “fearful about losing the thread here in the country.” The movie is out. He is already talking about a third.

They Spent $5 Million Hollywood Would Not

The wager is not subtle. Infidels is a standalone follow-up to Rankin’s 2020 high school siege picture, which Daily Wire picked up after other buyers stepped away, and it spends more than three times what the first film cost. Sonnier’s Bonfire Legend made it. Ben Shapiro and Mike Richards produced for Daily Wire. Majors took an executive producer credit through Tall Street Productions.

The logline Daily Wire sent out with the teaser does the selling in one breath. Radical Islamic terrorists hijack a liberal college’s pro-Palestine encampment, enforce Sharia, and execute infidels in a makeshift caliphate, while students, a campus guard, and a Delta Force veteran arm up. Rankin said Hollywood is “turning a blind eye to all this stuff” and running out of “made-up bad guys.” He wants filmmakers to “look statistically at who the bad guys in the world are.”

Sonnier put the same idea in plainer producer talk. “If you’re afraid to put radical jihadis as your villains, then you’re a wimpy movie producer. We don’t have that fear.”

TWO RUN HIDE FIGHT FILMS

The original ran 109 minutes and opened at Venice on September 10, 2020, before Daily Wire put it in front of members the following January. Infidels runs 128 minutes and never pretended it would play that festival. Rankin calls it “an ’80s, ’90s action movie with more humor than expected,” not a satire, even as the campus radicals are written for laughs.

Jonathan Majors Took the Call Sheet Anyway

Majors was supposed to be Kang the Conqueror across the next Avengers films. In 2023 a jury found him guilty of third-degree reckless assault and second-degree harassment. He got probation and a 52-week in-person intervention program, not jail. Marvel cut him on December 18, 2023. Other jobs went with that verdict.

Infidels is the first film he shot after the case. He plays Captain Clay Saunders, a published author and former Delta operator who comes to Laughton University in Virginia to warn about what Rankin calls the “green and red” alliance, the modern left and Islamic radicals. In the trailer Saunders says, “There are three ways Islam will conquer the West: through immigration, through the wombs of our women, and by using our nation’s freedoms against us.” Ben Shapiro has said the film is about ISIS, not all of Islam. The speech on screen does not draw that line.

Rankin would hire him again “in a heartbeat.” He called Majors gracious, grateful, and “super professional on-set,” a number one on the call sheet who joked by calling his director “Coach” and mixed with a younger, lesser-known cast. Sonnier, who has also worked with Mel Gibson, Gina Carano, Armie Hammer, and James Franco, treated the booking as a point of pride.

I have in many ways become the patron saint of canceled actors and I’m happy to do that because I understand. I’ve been attacked. I’ve been, you know, [people] attempted to cancel me or whatever and the truth is that’s some BS and, I don’t you know, I don’t play that way and so I’m going to work with the best actors available to me, whether it’s Mel Gibson, going back to Gina Carano, I worked with Armie Hammer, I’ve worked with James Franco twice, no one’s going to tell me I can’t work with someone.

Dallas Sonnier, producer, Bonfire Legend

He also said Majors “loved the script, loved shooting the movie, is so great in the film, and he is totally 1,000% behind it.” That is the bet on the poster. Early viewers keep saying the movie does not actually belong to him. Critic Collin Garbarino noted that Daily Wire sold a Jonathan Majors film and then gave the actor precious little screen time, and people finishing the picture on September 19 said the same thing in blunter terms: a solid B-movie in spots, with the billed star wandering through it.

In Gaffney, the Window Was Loose

Cameras rolled in February 2026 in Gaffney, South Carolina. The production had a SAG-AFTRA deal for the actors and no IATSE contract for the crew. On March 26, after five weeks of complaints, the stagehands’ union called a strike. The break point was a stunt window that was not a stunt window yet.

A sheet of tempered glass meant to shatter later sat loose in the frame. Majors and co-star JC Kilcoyne, who plays student Devlin Shaw, went through it and fell six feet. Kilcoyne needed stitches on his hands. Both men can be heard saying they were good. Kilcoyne’s representative said he “did not feel unsafe on set and continues to have a positive experience.” Crew who walked said the fall was the last straw, not the first problem.

WHAT BROKE ON THE GAFFNEY SET

• The glass: An unsecured pane dumped two actors to the ground during a scene that was not supposed to use breakaway glass yet.
• The medic: Crew described a rigged tree branch hitting the set medic, part of a pattern of props coming down on people.
• The building: Workers pushed off a location they said had black mold, after a contractor warned the place likely had asbestos and should be tested.
• The guns: The company used airsoft weapons, and crew said there were no normal meetings with Rankin or department heads before complex stunts.
• The cards: More than 60 percent of the crew signed IATSE authorization cards. Producers looked for replacements and kept shooting.

Sonnier did not deny the allegations when they were put to him. He said the industry was in freefall because of strikes and that idle union members were trying to sabotage the few people still making pictures. “We don’t negotiate with communists.” A day earlier he said he and his partners were “too busy being bad asses, blowing shit up, flying helicopters, and killing movie terrorists to concern ourselves with four assholes with signs on the sidewalk and their illegitimate ‘strike.’”

Crew also flagged special effects supervisor Chris Bailey, who had been sentenced in a 2021 explosives case. Bailey called that earlier matter a paperwork infraction and said no pyro was mishandled. The $5 million number is the point. Sonnier has always argued that low budgets plus final cut for directors is how these movies get made at all. Gaffney is what that looks like when the window is not screwed in.

What Happens After the Encampment Is Hijacked

The film opens in Somalia, where Saunders’ team grabs ISIS leader Asad al-Madhi and Saunders’ friend Reed Shaw is killed. Seven years later Reed’s son Devlin is at Laughton, sharing a room with Army veteran P.J. (James Bingham) and circling a crush, Lizzy Dupree (Tyler Aser). A pro-Palestine encampment led by Farrah Abel (Charlotte Delaney Riggs) and Bruce (Colton Kugler) has taken over the student union. Saunders is on campus to launch a book. Then Ibrahim Asad Melod (Stephen Hailo) and his cell hit the quad, jam phones, wire explosives, and start executing people.

The official trailer, which Daily Wire posted in full on August 6 after a June 25 teaser built from 9/11 footage, campus protests, and a clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is the version of the movie most people have seen.

David Lucas, as weary guard Terrence Kirk, is the comic relief Rankin promised, the “unlikely hero” who is tired of “Uncle Tom” smears in the official synopsis. Dean Gary (Jason Gray-Stanford) is written as the administrator who cannot name the threat. Rankin said humor is “a great way to ingratiate a film with an audience,” a lesson from a friend who once told him a script without a single definable joke was not how life works. He also admitted the projection. “I get to say a bunch of things about America that I believe.”

The Rooftop Clip Viewers Keep Sending

The sequence Daily Wire is pushing is not Saunders’ speech. It is the rooftop killings viewers keep clipping. Bruce looks at the bodies and says, “We just … didn’t expect … so much death.” Ibrahim tells him they have “killed the right amount to instill fear,” then talks about Americans who will not have children. Farrah says she is pansexual. Bruce says he is gay. Ibrahim throws Bruce off the roof. When Farrah runs and cries “Please! God,” he cuts her throat and says, “There is no God but Allah.”

The ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’ Scene Everyone Is Talking About

One scene shows the inevitable consequences of leftist activists embracing radical Islam.https://t.co/lGI2cXaGV8

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 18, 2026

Shapiro, on an episode of Friendly Fire with Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and Andrew Klavan, boiled the bit down to a dare. “If you really feel the empathy for the Islamic terrorist, then yeah, you’re kind of suicidal.” Sue Obeidi, senior vice president for the Muslim Public Affairs Council Hollywood Bureau, went the other way and called the picture “more ridiculous than it is offensive.” That gap is the business model. The scene exists to be forwarded. The rest of the 128 minutes has to carry people who already agree.

Sonnier Turned a Venice Leftover Into a Series

Rankin never planned Run Hide Fight as a franchise. He credits Richards and Sonnier with planting that idea and giving him room to write an ensemble picture with a twist, the “wrong” villains, and a message that mocks students who cover for foreign terrorists. “I’ve got Dallas to say, ‘Hey, let’s make the movies we want.’ That’s very encouraging. I feel blessed to make these kinds of movies.”

The first film was already a leftover. Shot in Red Oak, Texas, over five weeks on that $1.5 million budget, with Isabel May as a 17-year-old who turns on school shooters, it premiered at Venice and then sat. Cinestate, Sonnier’s earlier label, was collapsing. Daily Wire, looking for its first feature, took North American rights. Sonnier later said about 300,000 people watched the premiere, more eyeballs in two weeks than some of his earlier titles drew in a year. Six years later the same companies are back, with a bigger check and a star the majors dropped.

FROM VENICE TO DAILYWIRE+

1. September 10, 2020: Run Hide Fight premieres at the Venice Film Festival.
2. January 14, 2021: Daily Wire puts the film in front of members as its first feature.
3. December 18, 2023: Marvel Studios parts ways with Jonathan Majors after the assault conviction.
4. February 2026: Rankin starts shooting the untitled sequel in Gaffney.
5. March 26, 2026: IATSE calls a strike after the window fall and a stack of safety complaints.
6. June 25, 2026: Daily Wire drops a teaser built from real terror footage and campus unrest.
7. August 6, 2026: The full trailer lands and the September 16 date is locked.
8. September 16, 2026: Infidels premieres as a DailyWire+ exclusive.

Rankin said the project was branded racist before anyone had screened it, which he treats as proof he left the industry template. Same-week reviews split on whether the result is a throwback romp or cheap trolling. Todd Gilchrist called it more an epic act of trolling than a sincere film, with shoddy craft under the politics. Andrew Lawrence said the 128 minutes played like a student picture and took him three tries to finish. Film Threat’s Ethan Padgett put it with Daily Wire’s better work and called it an exhilarating blockbuster. Christian Toto, who interviewed Rankin and Sonnier, praised a bare-knuckled assault on a Hollywood that ignores reality.

Rankin Packed Jokes Around the Warning

The director of The Battle of Shaker Heights in 2003 is not pretending this is a coded text. He writes from fear, he said, mostly his own: college students turning on the country, a Palestinian cause he thinks leaves the campus open, and radical Islam, “an enemy that took out nearly 3,000 lives in just one day” on September 11, 2001. Infidels is the warning and the joke track at once, farcical radicals in the foreground, Ibrahim’s cell in the door.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• Kyle Rankin: He frames Infidels as a 1980s and 1990s action movie with more humor than people expect, not as a satire, and says the laughs are there to bring an audience in.
• Dallas Sonnier: He says refusing to cast “radical jihadis” as villains is cowardice, and that Infidels is the film you make if you do not have that fear.
• Sue Obeidi: The Muslim Public Affairs Council Hollywood Bureau official says the finished movie is more ridiculous than it is offensive, which undercuts the outrage the campaign is built to harvest.

That last view is useful to the bet even when it is hostile. If the film is too silly to harm, the clips still travel. If it is treated as a civilizational alarm, Daily Wire’s audience already showed up. Rankin gets to say the country is losing the thread. Sonnier gets another title in a pipeline that started with a Venice orphan. Majors gets a lead after Hollywood closed.

He Is Already Teasing a Third Film

For now Infidels is streaming now on DailyWire+ only. Rankin said he would not mind a later VOD window, the path The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin took a few weeks before his interviews, but that decision is not his. What he will talk about is another Run Hide Fight. He did not invent the series. Richards and Sonnier did. He is willing to keep it going.

The first film cost $1.5 million and gave Daily Wire a catalog title. The second cost $5 million, hired a former Marvel lead, shut down a South Carolina crew, and opened inside the same paywall on September 16. Rankin wants a third. Sonnier has already said no one tells him who he can hire. That is the rest of the wager, still unpriced.