The Daily Signal - Angel Studios: New Movies and How You Choose Which Films Hit Theaters

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

No Angel Studios‘ film makes it to the big screen without the approval of the Angel Guild.  There are more than “21 films a week submitted into the Angel Guild and then the Guild goes through those and they’re picking their favorites and they’re greenlighting them and then Angel Studios can only pick from the list that they greenlight,” Jeff Harmon, chief content officer for Angel Studios, says.  Movies like “Sound of Freedom” and “After Death” received enthusiastic support from the Angel Guild and in turn premiered on the big screen, but for every approved film there are hundreds more than the Guild “fails.”  Anyone can sign up to be a member of the Angel Guild and play a role in deciding what content Angel’s Studios should send to theaters. Jeff and Neal Harmon, CEO of Angel Studios, join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain how to join the Angel’s Guild, and to share about the latest Angel Studio’s movies and shows.  On Dec. 1, “The Shift,” a sci-fi romance depicting the story of Job from the Bible, premiers in theaters. In 2024, Angel Studios will release titles such as “Bonhoeffer” and “Cabrini.”  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, November 22nd. I'm Virginia Allen. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. And in many homes across America, after turkey has been eaten, you sit down to watch a movie with a slice of pumpkin pie maybe. But then the question is, what movie do you watch? That is always the question in my household. Well, our guests today have a few recommendations. Today, I am so pleased that we are joined by Angel Studios, C.E.

EO and Chief Creative Officer Neil and Jeff Harmon. They sit down with me to talk about some of their latest films and what to watch on Angel Studios over the holidays, also to talk about the Angel Guild and how you can get involved if you want to. They also share what to expect from Angel Studios in 2024. So stay tuned for my conversation with the Harmon Brothers after this. So what is going on? with Ukraine? What is this deal with the border? How do you feel about school choice? These are the

questions that come up to conservatives sitting at parties, at dinner, at family reunions. What do you say when these questions come up? I'm Mark Geinney, the host of the podcast for you. Heritage Explains brought to you by all of your friends here at the Heritage Foundation. Through the creative use of stories, the knowledge of our super passionate experts, we bring you the most important policy issues of the day and break them down in a way that is understandable. So check out Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. It is my pleasure today to be joined by the Harmon Brothers, Neil Harmon and Jeff Harmon. Neil serves as CEO of Angel Studios and Jeff as the chief creative officer. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for

Miss Virginia. This is exciting. Well, I want to start by asking you just to share a little bit of the story of how Angel Studios became what it is today. Growing up, did you all know as brothers that you wanted to make movies together, to be a part of production? We had three TV stations. This was not.

We grew up on potato farms in Idaho. Wow. And in a very poor family, I could count the number of times I saw movies while growing up on one hand at the dollar theater. Because that's the one that we would go to months after they came out. Yep, yep. And the very first movie I ever saw in theaters was Aladdin. Yeah. It's a good first.

Yeah, it was a good one. It is a good one to start off with. I remember watching just the spectacle of the Cave of Wonders and just being blown away by. I remember that too, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a, I didn't know that this was a profession at the time. Wow.

You just move water and then my mom would talk about how dentists make lots of money, doctors make lots of money, and lawyers make lots of money. So I thought I was going to be a lawyer. So then what shifted to where, Neil, maybe. you could answer this. What changed to where you started actually thinking about movies and production? It's when we had our own families. We were at ORABrus growing a tongue cleaner that gets rid of bad breath throughout the world by marketing it on YouTube. That we started talking one day and brainstorming around why there isn't a a solution for modern streaming for families where we have the stories that we can share together.

And yeah, from that hatched an idea that eventually became this company. That was in 2012 and we formed a company in 2013. This month is 10 years for Angel Studios. Congratulations. That's a major milestone. Major milestone. But at the time, like my oldest was nine. Okay.

I don't remember whether you had Manuel yet. I don't think I had kids yet. Yeah. And then Daniel, I think Daniel had one or two. Yeah. I guess Manuel was born that year. Yeah. So I had a newborn.

Okay. So it's once we started thinking about the media and storytelling. Yeah. From perspective of our own children that we said, we're not happy with where the world's headed and how are we going to solve this problem? or has someone solved this problem? And when we realized no one had and that there were other parents that were interested in solving this problem, we decided to do something about it. Yeah.

Explain if you would, what makes Angel Studios different than a Hulu or a Netflix. Because at the very service, you know, you're distributing content, you're making new shows, you're producing new shows. But what separates you from some of the kind of big Hollywood production and distribution platforms for content? The core premise of Hollywood is two things from our perspective. One is that if you collect a group of people and have them work together in storytelling, that you'll create a vibrant community that can tell stories better than anyone else in the world. we think that Hollywood actually is performing well on that premise, like that they tell a story better than anyone else in the world.

The second thing is, is that Hollywood has consolidated the decisions of what stories to tell into very few hands. Gatekeeper model. Gatekeeper model, yeah. And that's what's different. The angels find with the craft of Hollywood and the capability, But then the gatekeeper and the decision making, we feel like, has lost its way. It's trapped in a bubble.

And we've flipped the power structure so that the angel community, the Angel Guild, makes the decisions rather than a few elite decision makers. Yeah. So we don't make the decisions. We can't pick a film unless it goes through the Angel Guild first. And the Angel Guild is over 100,000 people. And growing. And growing very rapidly of people around.

the country, people around the world that have either one invested in one of the projects, a crowdfunded project like Drybar Comedy, The Chosen, Sound of Freedom, etc. They've invested in a project. And then those projects, once you've invested in them, you get invited into the Angel Guild as a member. And you get to review new content coming in and vote on that content to decide what gets through. And so you can join it by investing or you can join it by subscribing. So anybody who goes to angel.com slash guild can join the guild.

They get a vote on the content that goes to theaters. They get two free movie tickets to every single movie that comes out. So like if you, an example would be you were part of the Angel Guild earlier this year, then you had a chance to watch Sound of Freedom in advance. Wow. And a 30 million people worldwide saw Sound of Freedom in theater. over 30 million people because a thousand Angel Guild members voted. And said, this is it.

This is the film. Yes. Yes. And so not everybody votes on every project because we have over 21 films a week submitted into the Angel Guild. And then the guild goes through those and they're picking their favorites and they're green lighting them. And then Angel Studios can only pick from the list that they greenlighted.

We actually, I can't, as chief content officer, I can't pick a film. unless it first passes the Angel Guild by the rules that we've set in stone. Okay. Wow. But anyone listening if they wanted to join the Guild, they could. They just go to angel.com slash guild. It's really fun. That sounds really fun. It's really fun, just to take extra time and look through a few torches.

In my family, my kids, when they watch too much screen time, we say, Harman's live on the other side of the screen. In product world, the top of the best time. toy, my favorite toy, is always Legos, because you spend more of your time building than you do playing. That building is the play. The Angel Guild is that kind of a thing where you're living on the other side of the screen in Angel Studios more than on this side of the screen. The final product of getting to go watch the Sound of Freedom in theaters is a celebration. But the fun part is going through and getting rid of the losers, picking winners, following them through the process,

investing in them, giving filmmakers feedback. So we've got a film coming out in 10 days called The Shift. It's going to theaters nationwide. And this filmmaker took a $500 short film that he made. He made it by, it's $500 of pizza on set. And he scrapped together this short film. It turned out really good, much better than he expected. He submitted it to Angel Studios. The Guild liked it. Then it got crowdfunded. They raised over six and a half million dollars to make a feature film. He got Neil McDonough from Band of Brothers, Sean Astin from Lord of the Rings and Stranger Things. They've got Liz Tabish from The Chosen, our own Liz Tabish. Paras Patel, who's in The Chosen, plays Matthew. Liz plays Mary Magdalene.

Jordan Walker Ross. Who plays Little John and The Chosen, who was huge in season three. An all-star cast, Chris Palaha, who's Hallmark's biggest star. Like, he's the, somebody just said this morning, he's the Prince of Hallmark. And this works well. Just imagine the romance levels that Chris Palaha delivers in Hallmark. This is a dystopian romance. but imagine if it was directed by Christopher Nolan.

Wow. That's what the shift is. It's this sci-fi romance, and it's a modern retelling of the story of Job. So fascinating. And so the guild greenlit this. Then when he came in with his rough cuts of the movie when it was done, he had to go back through the guild and get to the score that's needed to go to theaters,

and he had to go through the guild over and over and over again. He basically had to double his score. Yeah. From the outset, his score was low. Low. And then he had to double it in order to get to theater. And so he just kept tweaking and he kept asking other filmmakers and the guilds kept failing him. And then he gets up to a level where it's passing the guild.

Wow. And now he's going to theaters nationwide because the guild gave us the score that we needed to go to theaters. Interesting. And we can look at that guild score and we can have a really good idea. pretty close to what the audience Rotten Tomato score is going to look like just based off the Guild scores. Wow. So it's very predictable.

So as a member of the Guild, you get to choose what movies go to theaters. Yeah. You get two movie tickets to every single movie. So all the Guild members are getting two movie tickets to the shift. That's just part of their thing. They get two movie tickets. They can go to any theater, any showtime. And then they get early access when it goes to streaming.

So right now, SoundVos, Freedom is in the Angel Guild only for streaming unless you want to buy it. Okay. So you can buy it for 20 bucks online, or you can just go join the Angel Guild, and you get Sound of Freedom, you get after death early, you get two tickets to the shift, you get two tickets to Gabrini, you get two tickets to a new movie we just announced called Bonhoffer. Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting.

I saw that announcement. Yeah. So cool. And there's others that are coming down the pipe that are equally exciting. I mean, this is just turning movie making on its head in many ways. I mean, just the idea of, okay, why do we make movies? We make movies for the audience, right? And to actually bring them into that process, it shouldn't be so novel, but it is.

It's incredibly novel. So I just love the model, and I'm going to go sign up for the Guild after this interview. I want to be a part of that. It's so cool. Now, let's talk about some of the movies that have just released that are coming down the pike. You mentioned after death. That has been neat to see the response that after death has received. It's still in theaters.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's still out in theaters. It's in a handful of theaters. Yeah, it's in 150 theaters right now. Its biggest run ended this last week. The goal was just to get as much run as we could out of it before Thanksgiving hits because that's when all the big movies come and push it out. Yeah, sure. And that movie coming in after Sound of Freedom was like, what should we do next?

Let's do a Halloween documentary for faith audiences. I love that. That process. And it did phenomenally well. It grossed over $11 million in theaters. Talk a little bit. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. But talk a little bit about the question that is asked in that movie.

Well, the question is one that has been asked throughout huge. human history, what happens after we die. And... But it takes less of the evidence. Yes. Yeah, it combines actual scientific evidence. It combines some stories that are well known and from multiple continents to find a common thread that happens to people when they are clinically dead, but then come back.

What happens to them? Yeah, there's examples of people that were dead for 90 minutes. or longer, and then they come back and without brain damage, and they have vivid memories. Wow. And the filmmakers did a beautiful job of taking music and what IndyWire, who actually didn't like the film, but they described it as the universe's most, what was the word they used, killer light show? The universe is most killer light show.

It's just this beautiful light show. essentially mixed in with these stories and this music. And it's not, it doesn't feel like you're watching a documentary. Yeah. Because you're just going through story retold after story retold, dramatized. And then you're getting very, very scientific views of what is happening when people pass that they have out-of-body experiences where there are things when they're clinically dead did they see in the room

and they described to the doctors or the surgeons after the fact and the surgeons are like, there's no way this person could even know what was happening in the room but they knew. So wild.

And you said you wanted to join the Angel Guild, Virginia. It's available right now for Angel Guild members. Yeah, so you don't have... More incentive. And after death isn't even available to buy. Right. The only way to watch it right now is either in the theater

in one of the few select theaters left. Wow. Or if you join the Angel Guild, you're going to get to watch it early and you get to watch Sound of Freedom early and you get to watch the new Tuttle Twins episodes early and you get to watch the new Wing Feather episodes early. The Guild is this community experience

where we're building together and changing the system together and changing the future of entertainment. Yeah. And when we get to a critical massive guild members, the accuracy of picking the winners goes up, then your launches in theaters become more successful because there's more guild members ready to go. And it's just like a virtuous cycle where each time we cycle through another movie,

through theaters and are successful, the whole network grows. And together, we get to change the future of entertainment in a way that, the collective group of people inside the Angel Guild get to decide how it looks. So fascinating. Well, we have Thanksgiving just right around the corner this week. And the classic family Thanksgiving situation is, okay, we're all stuffed with turkey. Now we want to watch something. But then an hour-long debate ensues of what do we watch?

You guys have so much good content on Angel Studios platform. What would be some of your highest recommendation? for families specifically this Thanksgiving. One of the things that happened earlier this week in an interview is somebody started asking about how Angel is not doing tent pole IP like traditional Hollywood. We're not doing superhero movies or we're not doing John Wick series or we're not approaching it that way. And I told them that I was at an after show for Sound of Freedom in Tennessee, and a filmmaker came up and said to me, what's so exciting about Angel is that people are showing up because it's Angel.

Not because necessarily the movie. It's because they trust what Angel stands for. And what Angel stands for are the views of those 100,000 and growing people. and soon to be your view, right? And as these people watch these shows and they answer the question, does this amplify light? Does this show amplify light?

Is it true? Is it honest? Is it noble? Is it just? Is it excellent? These principles, we think that that's the, like that's the greatest recommendation

that you can have in the world today, we believe, is the green light of the Angel Guild? That's the greatest recommendation. So anything that the Angel Guild has passed, you should check out as a family. Yeah. A really fun one for Thanksgiving that's all ages is the Wingfeather Saga. Okay.

It's the first season's out. There's six episodes. My eight-year-old watched it, and she said, Frozen's no longer my favorite movie. She calls it Elsa. Elsa's no longer my favorite movie. Wing Feather Saga is now my favorite movie. High recommendation. But I just talked to a reporter two days ago, and they said,

oh, I watched the Wing Feather Saga. I'm huge fans. We're huge fans. And I was like, oh, your kid's like it? They're like, oh, no, we're just watching it. That's fantastic. We're not watching it with our kids. Yeah, it's got this very painted art look.

It's based off the best-selling book series, the Wing Feather Saga, by Andrew Peterson. and if you want kind of a fresh, if you're wishing there was more C.S. Lewis's in the world and Chronicles and Arnia and Lord of the Rings, this is on that level. Wow. It's a really good book series. It's very symbolic.

It's whimsical. Fun. Fantasy and it's all very allegorical. And teaches true principles. It teaches families how to stick together through hard times. Powerful. Now, during the holiday season, we have the shift is going to be out in the future.

theaters starting December 1st. 1st, that's right. Though there is a showing for Angel Guild members on Wednesday in about 800 theaters on Wednesday the 29th. Okay. So that's, you know, right after Thanksgiving where they can just go to their local theater and there's like an after show. It'll be a live show.

It'll be a live. Where you actually get a watch. The actors do Q&A and the director do Q&A. It's very cool. It's not in a cost extra. It's just guild members can get in and go to their local theater. It won't be like super crowded or whatever. Yeah, they'll have the theater themselves.

It's kind of an experience just for guild members. That is very neat. So what can we expect from Angel Studios in 2024? What are we looking forward to next year? The slate is going to be eight that we're planning on eight titles. Launched in the theaters. We've got a number of seasons that are coming out as well. We did four titles this year for reference.

Yeah. Okay. Double. So we're doubling it. And then we're launching season four of The Chosen. We're launching season two of Wingfeather Saga. Okay. Season three of Tuttle Twins.

And what am I missing? Cabrani in theaters. Bonhofer. Yeah. Bonhofer in theaters. We're working on a movie called Young Washington with John Irwin, who did, I can only imagine, and Jesus Revolution. Very neat. An American underdog.

We share a very short movie. strong passion for the founding of America. And we're essentially, our attempt is to do, redo what we did for the Bible with the founding of America, where we build out a universe around. It's just an under, under explored area of entertainment is to be able to go through one of the most important periods in world history, which is the founders. Yeah. What stage of production is that in right now? It's pre-production and the finalized script. Okay. It's at that stage.

They're working on it, and of course they have to pass the Angel Guild. Yes. They're a little behind where they wanted to be because of the strikes took a little longer than they were hoping, but they're back at it. There's that one. There's another one called Homestead. This is a, based on the book series, Black Autumn. Stars Neil McDonough, who's also in the shift.

Yes. And so that one's being worked on right now. That one just finished filming. They also have to pass the guild, but they'd like to take it to theaters. There are a bunch of others that are currently in the process right now that are coming down and they are awesome. They're just not announced yet. And there's Bonhoeffer, which is the story of the pastor in Germany who stood up to Hitler. And his story is incredible. This movie is not. not what anybody would expect from an independent film. This is a big movie. Wow.

And so that one we just announced. Our goal is to have 12 movies a year released in theaters so that every single month of membership in the Angel Guild equates to enough tickets in the box box. Like you get enough tickets to pay for your whole entire membership. Yeah. Right now, the early members, they still get all the early streaming and you're, think of it like a Patreon,

where you're all working together to build this? Why are we doing it this way instead of the way Netflix does it? We have learned that the community aspect of watching films creates an experience that shapes culture. It becomes part of the culture. Like there's lots of things that have come to Netflix that nobody hears about. Like they hear about it if they're on Netflix,

but they don't become part of the cultural conversation the way that Sound of Freedom did. Sound of Freedom's arguably the most. talked about story in this decade. Yeah. And that's what the Angel Guild wants. That's what we all want. That's what we all want.

That's what we all want. Shape culture. And if you, when you join, what's happening is as the Angel Guild gets bigger, it's a launch pad for theatrical releases to where you can take on these really risky projects. Like the shift, we're a little bit early on this. So it probably won't be like the, I mean, we think it will be a successful launch. It's not a super expensive film. But it's such a difficult film.

It's a kind of film that Hollywood would never do. Because it doesn't have any particular genre. It doesn't have, it's a story that's super risky. It's retelling the story of Job in sci-fi with faith elements, with action elements, but it's not any one of those genres. It doesn't shy away from prayer in the movie. but it doesn't feel like a faith movie. It's a, and it's so different that the people who normally go after the faith genre, they're saying, oh, it's sci-fi. I don't know if I want to go.

And then you got the people who would normally go to a sci-fi movie, and they're like, oh, it's kind of faith-oriented. Yeah. That's weird. Job. And the people who actually watch it are like, this is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. Wow. So it's going to be a challenge to get people. there, but we're building a model where those kind of risks and great storytelling can happen

without having to have a franchise built, without having to, you know, it's very risky, the theatrical business. It's hard to get things to theaters, and people spend enormous amounts of money. There was a movie that came out at the same time as Sound of Freedom. It was called Joyride, and they spent tens of millions of dollars marketing that movie, and it totally fell flat on its face. Wow. And but with the Angel Guild, we can determine whether the movie is going to be successful when people see it from the early feedback and then have the group of people who want to show up to see it the opening weekend.

Want to bring their friends. And then that will carry the message out to the culture. You're actually, you are actually changing culture when you're in the Guild. You're picking the movies. You're launching them into theaters. You know they're going to be good because the Angel Guild only picks the good stuff. And it is hard. 99% of films that are submitted, the Angel Guild cannot make it into theaters.

We don't even have the choice to take them into theaters. We can only take the ones that's approved, and almost all of them fail. We have major filmmakers that have submitted movies to the Angel Guild, and they fail, and they get so mad. They're like, you should take me. My name is so big. And we're like, we can't. Our rule is, is we won't take you unless you pass the guilt. Wow.

And some filmmakers look at that as an opportunity. Like, there's a challenge and they'll go back and they'll tweak and like the shift. They tweaked and tweaked and tweaked and created a movie that's going to be, I believe, a classic. Yeah. People are stunned by this movie. Yeah. It is. And especially like women love this movie.

Hmm. Like at astronomical rates. Having that romance side in there. That dystopian romance side, people come away saying it feels like hunger games or Inception. And that's the reason why one person said, it's like if Christopher Nolan made a Hallmark movie. Which means both sides. Men love Christopher Nolan movies and women love Hallmark movies. It's married and Missed.

That's fantastic. Oh, wow. Okay, so it's out in theaters December 1st. Folks can go see it. I do have to ask, as a major fan of The Chosen, what do we have for the release date of season 4? Do we have a date locked in? Yeah, February. It's coming out.

So the Chosen, this is done with Fathom events rather than Angel, because Angel does big theatricals. We're not great at the, like, little event type things. Sure. So The Chosen is releasing the episode's first in Fathom events in February and- February and... Throughout February, like it's February 1st, 14th, and 28th or something like that. And then after that it comes to the streaming app. Then it will come to Angel Studios app for streaming.

Yeah, and the goal is to launch it all onto streaming by the week of Easter. Yeah, by Easter time. Oh, perfect. So it's going to be fun. That is going to be fun. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much your time today. This has been so fun to have you on to hear about what's keeping you all busy. You're staying very busy.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you for your time. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Virginia. Thank you. Quick announcement before we go today, we do not have a top news show this afternoon. The podcast team here at The Daily Signal is spending the next few days with family celebrating Thanksgiving. We truly hope that you are getting to do the same. So we will not have a top news show today or the rest of the week.

But we do have a Thanksgiving special coming out to more. morning that I am very excited for with a number of individuals talking about the history of Thanksgiving, why we celebrate. You're definitely going to want to catch that episode, whether it's on a walk tomorrow morning as you start out your Thanksgiving day, just a great way to kick off Thanksgiving to remember why we celebrate, to remember the history behind the holiday. So be sure to check out that Thanksgiving special. But thank you for joining us on today's show. And hey, if you have a little extra time over the holiday, have a little bit of time off, take a moment to leave the daily signal a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you like to listen.

It really means a lot to us when we hear your feedback. We so appreciate. We're so thankful for those of you who have already done that, who've left those reviews. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We will see you back here tomorrow morning for our Thanksgiving special, and we will be back with top news, our afternoon edition. next Monday, November 27th. Thanks so much.

The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.