Morning Wire - How Angel Studios is Winning the Box Office | 12.3.23

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

A unique and innovative approach to filmmaking, which relies on consumers input, has brought incredible success to Angel Studios. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The box office success of the Jim Caviesel starring film, The Sound of Freedom, and the massive popularity of the hit TV series The Chosen, has put the innovative studio behind them on the map. Angel Studios, which uses a crowdfunding model, has blazed a unique new path for producing and distributing entertainment content through what it calls the Angel Guild. In this episode, we talked to the CEO and co-founder of Angel Studios about what sets the company apart and where he sees things going from here.

I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley, with Georgia Howl. It's December 3rd, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now to discuss Angel Studios' innovative approach to film and television is its co-founder and CEO Neil Harmon. Neil, thanks for joining us. Thank you. So Angel Studios has a very creative, unique business model that I don't think the world's exactly seen before. Can you first give us a big picture perspective on what is your mission and how you approach it as a business? Angels named after the people who made it all possible, the angel investors.

So we are backed by thousands and thousands of people who have invested in our shows, invested in their launch. They participate in a community. They provide feedback to improve the storytelling at Angel. And we call them the Angel Guild. And we named the company after them. Nothing comes to Angel without their discerning approval. How do you manage that? You're saying thousands of people, you actually have to take into account their input and use that as guidance in the approval process. I don't know how specific you want to get here, but how do you handle that? That sounds complicated. So it's not that complicated. There's a book called The Wisdom of Crowds. And the idea there is that if you have a diverse group of people making independent decisions that they can be smarter than any expert. And in that book, they give some examples. So, the crowd usually performs better than the stock trader. There's an example of, well, who wants to be a

millionaire? People can ask for a friend for an answer or they can ask the audience to answer. And if they ask a friend, which usually is the expert, somebody they know that knows that's most knowledgeable and whatever the question is, they get it right 60% of the time. But when they ask the audience, they get it right 91% of the time. So our premise is that Hollywood, has been controlled largely by a few gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers live in a bubble, and they just don't get it right. Like 80% of box office films that release in the theaters fail.

And so if you let the people, the audience decide what should come to market, we think that they're going to make better decisions than a few gatekeepers are. So we're basically flipping the paradigm to where instead of a few elite people are the gatekeepers, the people who care about the culture get to be the gatekeepers. All right, so it's audience testing first, sort of in reverse. You go directly to the viewers first, and if they're really interested in it, they're going to actually invest in it.

Yes, and it's this simple, John. Like, if you open the Angel app, there's a little guild button, click on the guild button, and if you're a guild member, then it brings up a video. We call it a torch. It could be a full-length feature film. It could be a concept for a series.

people watch it and then they vote it's that easy and based on those votes we make our decisions and it's just fascinating there's been things that we thought oh for sure this is this this is an awesome project and then they vote give their feedback and we're like oh yeah we get it that's not high enough bar it no it didn't make it and this is areas that it's weak so it's really fun for the filmmakers because even if they get rejected by the angel guild they get a report and some feedback that helps them improve. A lot of times with studios, there will be some key successes that really help determine the direction of that studio. What were some of your early wins that helped you figure out how to fine-tune this process and what kinds of projects would actually fit best?

So the guild so far, it's a growing group of people. There's over 100,000 guild members today. And they're pretty genre agnostic. We've done fantasy. Our first show was stand-up comedy, which is dry bar comedy. gets over a billion views a year. Faith, The Chosen, TV series, child trafficking, Sound of Freedom, the story of Abraham and Isaac. We've got a sci-fi movie that's coming out on December 1st. The traditional studio says, let's just go deep and go around one category. That's not the way the Angel Guild is making decisions.

Our North Star is stories that amplify light, and our definition of light is stories that are true, honest, noble, just, authentic, lovely, admirable, and excellent. So they have these eight keywords that are triggers for them to look at this show. And if it meets that criteria, it doesn't matter whether it's trial trafficking or anime. As long as it amplifies light, and it's well made. It can make it through the Angel Guild. And I assume those categories, that criteria helps determine what you even put in front of investors as well, the Angel Guild. There's obviously some pre-selection there, correct?

So there's a pre-selection in the sense that we get between 100 and 200 submissions a week. Sure. And it has to be a concept, what we call a torch. It needs to be at least five minutes long. It needs to be a distinct piece of storytelling. It can't be a sizzle reel. It can't be a trailer. It needs to show the filmmaker's vision and their ability to tell a story so that the guild can catch the vision of what they're trying to do.

And so we turn away a lot of submissions. But if they have a legitimate torch submission that meets those criteria, we send it through the guild. Now, a new project from you guys is called The Shift. Tell us about this film. You've said it's a romance movie for men? Tell us about this project. Yeah. So this is a romance movie that your husband might actually like.

And it's sci-fi. So we originally thought the audience for this film would be. men, but the story is this connection between a husband and a wife who are trying to get back together throughout this film. But it's a modern retelling of the story of Job, and it's not like anything you can possibly imagine. I can't even describe it. But when we tested it with the Angel Guild, it was clear that women love this movie and men like this movie. That's a big win for romance. I would call it dystopian romance. Okay.

Like, it's not like what you'd expect from a Hallmark Christmas flick, but the main character, he has starred in a number of Hallmark films. His name's Christopher Palaha. And then his, the benefactor is played by Neil McDonough. And it just has an amazing cast. And it's going to be kind of a rock your mind type of experience, like nothing you've ever seen before. And with this project, maybe this will help us kind of understand the process of being produced by you guys.

It started off as very low budget, correct? The filmmaker, his name's Brock Heasley, he scraped together a bunch of favors and $500 to build his torch. And he made this little 18-minute short film that helped people capture the vision of what he was trying to do. And then over the last few years, he took that and he turned it into a multimillion-dollar film with a star cast. It's going to be fun to see how audiences respond to it. It's called The Shift and comes out December 1st. Now, in terms of release strategies, you guys have made some waves and how you've chosen to release films and shows like The Chosen, for example, in theaters and online releases. You're also now licensing content for other platforms to stream. Can you talk us through some of those decisions?

Sure. So our model is a bit like what Roblox and Fortnite did in the gaming industry, where they provide a really, really great product for free. and then made money off of like added benefits or the like. With our model, for example, we provide Drybar, the Chosen and other shows for free, and then people after they watch it, they can pay it forward to help the show reach more people and to fund future episodes and seasons. We pioneered this same pay-it-forward model with his only son in theaters around Easter time, and then we scaled it completely out for Sound of Freedom this summer. Just so happens if you do a great job telling a story, what matters to people most is how storytelling's going to affect our world.

Like how it's going to affect my children, our lives. And so, you know, people have good hearts and millions of people are paying it forward for other people to give these stories a chance so that these stories and messages reach more people. With Sound of Freedom in particular, which I saw and was terrific and extremely powerful, paying it forward also meant actually by. tickets for people in the theater. That's right. How did that work? You could just scan a QR code in the end credit scene and then click on whether you want to buy one to 100 tickets for other people. And then we take those pay it forward funds and we market that to people who wouldn't

otherwise see the film. And then they can claim those tickets and they can go to the theater and watch a film. This is really borne out of a bit of inspiration. and also just because the founders of Angel Studios were Idaho Farm Boys. And when we grew up, our family couldn't afford to go to the theater. The first time I remember going to the theater was when I was a teenager and it was in the dollar movie,

the sticky floors, you know, from the soda. But it was the most magical experience to go to the theater and watch, I think it was Lion King. You know, I think I went to the theater maybe twice on my entire childhood. but it really changed me. And it was an escape. It was a chance to be, you know, see the world in a different way

and just be inspired by a really great story. And so when we were doing Sound of Freedom and we saw, like there were days we were giving away 40,000 tickets in a day. And my hometown was 11,000 people. And I think about what people are doing for other people out there and the impact this is going to have on the culture, that people went, became introduced, to the problem of trafficking and got to experience to this in the theater, that's huge impact.

I mean, 40,000 people that couldn't have or wouldn't have attended a theater went to Sound of Freedom every day just because people were giving. And that's real powerful impact on culture. What's next for Angel Studios? Do you have any plans to make any changes to types of content or delivery changes in terms of how you're going to offer content? That's a good question. year we released four films in the theaters and then we have a number of TV shows. Tuttled twins, the Wing Feather Saga, the Young David series just is starting to come out right now in preparation for the release of David in 2025. So we have some series and then we have four theatrical releases. Next year we plan on doing eight theatrical releases and then the year after in

2025 or planning on doing 12 so that people can basically have an outlet that they trust right the angel brand means that the community that people like you and me decided that this was a story that was excellent and the amplified light and that they can trust to go to the theaters and and and see this story and as that you know as we scale this out and this storytelling out we think as we'll have long term impact on culture and it's really exciting to time because the industry is changing so much right now that we have this moment where truly we get to decide together what our future will be. There's no doubt the landscape is changing part of what we're trying to do here at the Daily Wire as well. Reimagined the model and shape the culture.

Neil, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, John. That was Angel Studio CEO Neil Harmon, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.