Death Athletic

Death Athletic: A Dissident Architecture is a 2023 American documentary film written, produced, and directed by Jessica Solce about the life of 3D printed gun inventor, Cody Wilson, over a period of around 7 years, from 2015 through 2022.

Synopsis
The film primarily follows the life of Cody Wilson, famous for having invented the first mass-market available 3D printed gun called the Liberator back in April 2016. Solce follows Wilson for a period of 7 years from around 2015 through to 2022. Over the 7-year-period, Wilson speaks of his beginnings as a "troll" and "mischief maker" to a troll seeking "bigger marks", moving from random online targets to organizations like the United States Federal government and gun control laws writ large. The film interviews many of the other figures beyond Wilson alone that have worked on the related 3D printed gun and CNC milled gun projects, such as the ghost gunner, that Wilson's company Defense Distributed had been working on in that timeframe.

An additional key underlying theme of the film revolves around the concepts of freedom of speech, and how Wilson has been advocating and arguing that his real purpose is not related to the mere distribution of guns, but that the act of distributing or making files (or code) available to the public over the internet, is an action that ought to be thought of and considered protected under the first amendment to the United States Constitution, and thereby protected speech, and not just a second amendment or gun rights related battle.

Production
Solce followed Cody Wilson around for the filming for at least 7 years from the period beginning around 2016 until release of the film in 2023. In those years Wilson had faced numerous lawsuits from state, local, and federal government sources, and numerous attorneys general as well as faced personal allegations of sexual misconduct in 2018. Death Athletic was Solce's second major film release, after No Control (a film about gun control laws in the United States and the broader implications of whether or not to regulate or increase armed civilian numbers), a film released in 2015.

The film was produced by Solce's production company, Encode Productions.

Release
The film was released to streaming services for digital rental or purchase on October 21, 2023, with purchase directly from the director at her website, or available from more conventional services such as Amazon, YouTube, or the iTunes store the same month.

Funding
As of 2021, the film had received funding from some prominent bitcoin and cryptocurrency companies, Samourai Wallet in particular. Prior to this funding assistance from Samourai Wallet, it was reported that Solce had been funding the production entirely out of her own pocket.

Movie promotional poster controversy
According to director Jessica Solce in an interview with podcaster Michael Malice, the original movie poster had to be changed out in order to have an acceptable one that the various distribution channels would accept, such as Amazon etc. The original movie promotional poster had an x-ray image of a hand holding a Liberator plastic pistol and was aiming the gun from the side profile view. This was considered to be too "controversial" or "dangerous", so Solce was forced to change out the original movie poster (seen below on the left) for a simple image of a ghost gunner CNC milling machine which is seen (below right) with a 80% lower receiver ready to be finished by the machine and turned into what the United States government legally considers to be the part that is considered the "gun" by the letter of the law.