The Daily Signal - BONUS | The Crowdfunded Christian Film That Out-Punched 'Creed' at The Box Office

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Angel Studios Co-Founder Jordan Harmon and filmmaker David Helling explain the surprise hit success of the Bible film "His Only Son," in theaters now. It beat out "Creed III" in theaters on opening weekend, hitting no. 3 at the Box Office. Supporters have also purchased 16,000 tickets for other people to see the film. Go to angel.com/son to purchase tickets, angel.com/pay-it-forward to purchase tickets for others, and angel.com/freetickets to pick up free tickets to see the film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a Daily Signal podcast bonus episode for Thursday, April 6th. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with Jordan Harmon, the president of Angel Studios and David Helling, creator and director of the hit film, His Only Son, to discuss how their film performed so well beating out Creed at the box office last weekend leading into Holy Week. Now, stay tuned for today's show after this. I'm Mark Geinney from the Heritage Foundation, and we are very pleased to bring you the next chapter in the Heritage Explains podcast. Over the years, this show has been so loved by so many people, and we want to keep bringing you the insights into policy and current events that you've come to expect here,

while updating the show with a new sound, a new format, and some new voices. Most notably, we're excited to upgrade this show from a one-off format where we bring you different topics each week to a serialized format, where we craft deep dives into hot-button issues in the form of seasons, series of shows. that focus the intellectual weight of the Heritage Foundation on one topic. First up, a six-episode series on the biggest existential threat to our nation right now, the Chinese Communist Party. Check out the new Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. This is Tyler O'Neill, a managing editor at The Daily Signal.

I'm joined by Jordan Harmon, president at Angel Studios and David Helling, creator and director of his only son. I'd like to start off by saying a huge congratulations on making a crowdfunded faith-based film hitting number three at the box office, beating out Creed. Can you tell us a little bit more about the journey to this great success? Yeah, my little brother actually, well, he's taller than me, but he's 12 years younger than me. He had said, he was like, look at his only son going. full drago on creed. And then he went to see me to leave. He said, if he dies, he dies.

Anyway, but, uh, wait, so what was your question? Okay, so the journey. Yeah, the journey of a, yeah, well, this is so. And thank you for having us, Tyler. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much. And so, uh, yeah, the journey with his only son began five and a half years ago. But the journey that led up to his only son began nearly 15 years ago when I was a Marine in Iraq and the Lord got a hold of my heart and over my eyes to the truth of his word, the truth of his gospel. And from that moment on, from the time that I saw, I could see the people in history, in the biblical narrative as real people. I wanted to show others that it was real people. So I endeavor from that moment on as a heart cry and as my life's mission to illustrate and exposit the biblical

narrative through film and to bring scripture's truth from the page to the screen. And so for the time that I was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, I went to film school, prayerfully was led to go to the Academy of Art University of San Francisco of all places to begin my journey of biblical filmmaking and did biblical shorts for about 10 years. And then that led to when I began his only son about five and a half years ago. All right. And why choose, well, let's just go over like this is a huge success. Let me underline that, like bold it, put it in italics. Where does it stack up on the with the box office release? What looks, how does it look going forward?

Because I just spoke with Matt Farachi and he told me that you guys have 16,000 tickets that people have paid to pay it forward already for people to go see this movie free of charge. So like go into a little bit of what has happened here. So I think there's a few, there's a few steps into that actually. The first one is normally, you know, some people might look at a $5.5 million opening weekend and go, I hear movies that do $100 million in the opening weekend. That's part of the story. The real crux of the story is you've got this beautiful film that the Angel Gild, which is a group of almost 100,000 people inside of Angel's ecosystem investors and the Chos, and Tuttle Twins and Freelancers, and all those people basically came in and said,

we want his only son to exist. We want it to get out to the world. We love this. And this is a film that had been rejected by Hollywood. Yeah. And so, because it's been a finished film for a while. Quite a while. And so the Angel Guild gave it one of the highest scores we'd ever seen. And so we started going, not only is this a great film, but this feels like a film that needs to come out and theaters. And David, literally did we know, his heart was he would love to come out in theaters at Easter. And we had no idea. A prayer for years, actually. And so we could, I remember meeting with David and said, hey, what do you think of doing? You know, in Easter theatrical release, he's like, you have no idea how much that means to me to hear that. And we're like, oh, that's great.

But the, but then the crowd fund, we basically helped David crowd fund his P&A budget for, and we thought we'll do a limited crowd fund for $500,000. Yeah, P&A is marketing costs. Yeah, it's your prints and advertising. Thank you for the, that's a terminology they use in willy-nilly in the industry, but most people don't hear it too often. But the, but we thought we'll do 500 screens, 600 screens, we'll raise a couple, four or five hundred thousand dollars in P&A for his only son. And then we'll do a limited release. Well, that P&A campaign maxed out what he had put as his max, which was 1.235 million in less than 100 hours, like 80-7 hours. And so we immediately went to the exhibitors, the theater chains, and said,

we need more screens. And so it was a miracle that we were able to ramp up to 2,000 screens. Yeah, well, because y'all said that we needed more screens. And then when they started seeing theaters sell out, then the exhibitors said, we need more screens.

That's exactly right. They're like, hey, we got to get you. Because we started doing more pre-sells than people, you know, people don't do a lot of pre-sales unless it's like a Marvel franchise. You know, there's very little in pre-sales. It might be 10, 15, 20,000.

and we had done, by the time of opening day, I think we had done over $2 million in pre-sells. And so people were like, we need more screens, and the theaters were really excited about it. Well, the beauty of this is a good example of this in comparison with Hollywood is Paul, Apostle of Christ, which came out just under a decade ago, did 5.1 its opening weekend,

and they'd spent significantly more, based off of normal Hollywood estimates, in their advertising. We spent less than a million dollars in paid ads by a significant margin coming into opening weekend and doing 5.5 million. I think that's really the story here is that you have an incredible film that ends up getting 96% on Rotten Tomatoes from the audience score. It's at 97 now. 97. Yeah.

Well, when I was, is it 97? I've got a double check. It's balanced back and between 95 and 97, but it's got incredible audience score. It's got, you know, the critics are even loving it. It's got a fresh score from the, from the critics side. and it's done so extremely efficiently, which we're really, really, really excited about. And so it got into second week,

and a lot of times theaters will, you know, cut off your screens for second week because you've got Super Mario Brothers coming out. You've got, obviously, another week of John Wick and Dungeons and Dragons. And not only were you able to maintain our screens, but we're actually able to increase the amount of screens a little bit. That's the first time I heard that. So that's really cool.

Yeah, so it actually went up a little bit week over week, which is a now. Yeah. Actually, probably. But that being said, it's very, very exciting to see the response, the excitement, the efficiency that this has happened at. And so it's just a beautiful film that is clearly touching people's hearts and such an great experience for Easter. Yeah, it's really special to see time and time again, both in person, because I'll go in, I'll visit theaters around here because they have me here in Utah right now. And we'll go and see people as they're coming out. And I don't know here in person, but also in the comments that people,

are saying, I'm going to see it again. There was actually this one lady who said, I'm going to see it tomorrow with my family. It's like, wow, you didn't get forward to first time, all right. But I mean, time I tell me, they're like, I'm going to see this. I'm telling my whole family, all my friends, and I'm bringing a group to go and see it again.

And my wife and I had the same experience. Like, I liked it the first time I watched it. I liked it a lot the second time. I really enjoyed it the third. And the fourth, I just loved it. Like, it just got more and more meaningful to be every time I experienced it, my wife, the same thing.

And so it's just, it's a beautiful film. Well, and as an Easter movie, I think your vision for releasing it on Easter makes a lot of sense, given the resonance. For those who may not know, from what I understand, it's the story of Abraham and Isaac, but then it cuts to the end to- We're going to talk about spoilers? Don't get spoilers. Let people journey through the movie.

David hates spoilers. But you're right. Obviously so. It's an incredible Easter film that ties in Christ and His atonement. Well, the whole thing, it points to Christ the whole time from beginning to end. That's what it became more meaningful to me. Because I started seeing all the ways it was pointing to Christ to the dialogue and what it did. Parallels the whole way through the symbolism, through the dialogue.

It opens up with a quote from Christ because that is what the Lord was doing, 2,000 years before Christ in the life of Abraham, in the sacrifice of Isaac. He was setting this man, taking this man out of paganism, saying, I'm going to make a nation out of you, I'm going to give you a land. But before he did, he made a memorial stone. He made this example that would carry on and echo through the generations of Abraham's descendants until the Lord himself would lay down his only son on the same hill for the sins of all those who believe. Yeah, and talking about that same hill, I mean, it's interesting. There are different scriptural references. says there's, the Samaritans thought that the, that the sacrifice took place on their hill, that they identified with Mount Moriah, and then, you know, you had the Jews associating it with where the temple was eventually built. Can you talk about that connection a little bit more?

You mean as far as the hill and it being Golgotha? So, so, yeah, Jerusalem is built on Mount Moriah. The whole hill is Mount Moriah. And obviously, the dome of the rock in the temple mount. The dome of the rock now covers the rock where Muslims say that that's where Abraham laid down Ishmael, according to the Quran. But the temple mount, many Jews believe that that's the place where Abraham laid Isaac upon the altar. But I think the, when you look in contact, the way that they get that, by the way, is because Solomon calls the place Mount Moriah where he's building the temple. I mean, yes, the mountain's a big place, but where exactly was the altar? Well, when you see, as Abraham and Isaac are making their way up the hill, Isaac has the wood of the sacrifice that he's

carrying up the hill, and he turns to his father and says, Father, we have the fire, we have the wood, but where's the lamb for the burnt offering? Then Abraham replies and says, God himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering. He gets to the top, the Lord stays his hand, spoiler alert, and he looks behind him and there's a ram caught in a thicket. Well, that's a ram. That's not the lamb. And that's not just a different word in English. It's a different word in Hebrew.

And so the motif of the lamb obviously carries on through Passover. It carries on. And so that's another memorial of this lamb that is provided to atone for the sins of the people. And then that carries on year by year until you get to John 1 and you've got Christ approaching John the Baptist at the River Jordan, he says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Well, flashing back to Abraham and Isaac at the altar, after the Lord stays his hand, he's got the ram in the thicket,

Abraham calls that place, the Lord will provide future tense. Not the Lord provided, because obviously that, some people painted as that was the provision, the ram. No, but he calls it future tense the Lord will provide it. And then Moses goes on to continue to say, because he's the one pinning Genesis under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, He says, therefore it says to this day, in the Mount of the Lord, it shall be provided, still future tense.

So what was provided? Was it Solomon's Temple? Was the ultimate provision? Or was it David? Capital D, the descendant of David, that is Christ and who is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, who on the same hill on Mount Moriah, outside the gates of the city, his life was given as a ransom for many, that all who believe in him and his finished work can have life through him.

And yeah, so that's why I think that it's, it's safe to say that it's the same place. Because the picture and the parallel is two, it's too on the nose of it being pointing to Christ and his cross. Well, but Galgatha is, you know, as you mentioned outside the city, they claim, you know, that the temple was built on Mount Moriah. Is this just a mountain that's so big that encompassed? compasses the city as well? So the hill, yeah, so the hill is, like Jerusalem is actually built, like on, even if you go down the city of David, it slopes down to the, well, they got the Kidron Valley here, and you've got

the valley of Hennam at the bottom. That, that, even that slope is Mount Moriah, and Mount Moriah can tear and you's up to the north as well, and it spreads out to the, to the west. and then obviously right directly to the east, you have the Kidron Valley in the Mount of Olives. Yeah, so I think it's safe to say, because keep in mind now, the Lord in Genesis 22 at the top of the chapter,

he says, and go to the land of Mariah, and there offer him on one of the mountains on which I will tell you. And so then you have, then you have, when Solomon's building the temple, He calls it Mount Moriah, and he says, because it's the threshing floor over which the angel of the Lord held when David was having his census, and they had the plague going on to the people, and all these

people were dying in a matter of hours, and he looks up north of his palace. So he's looking up at the threshing floor, I think of Onan, and he sees the angel of the Lord between heaven and earth with his sword drawn. And it says over that threshing floor on Mount Moriah is where Solomon built the temple. and that is, now did that place just become known as Mount Moriah? Because the Lord says the mountains, one of the mountains in the land of Mariah. So even if it isn't exactly on the mount, on the slope of Mariah, and it happens to be on what is now Mount Zion to the east,

which is still broader Jerusalem encompasses, then I think it still would be the place where, where the Lord gave his only son, and the wood was placed on his back, and he carried it up, and he is the lamb that the Lord provided for the offering. And in the ultimate provision, that was the future tense. The future tense of both Abraham and Moses in their testimony was pointing forward, and it wasn't to Solomon's temple, it was to Christ, to the lamb who was for the offering. So that's my take, but I think there's scriptural precedent for that.

Yeah. And why his only son as the branding? You know, you didn't go with, you know, the story of Isaac, you didn't go with Abraham, you know, as the... Well, with a few comments on social media, like, how does Ishmael feel about the title? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because that's the point. I mean, exactly what I just... Well, for one, um... The scriptures actually... Because it's not really talking about it's Isaac. The scriptures do refer to it in one scenario. Yes. What's the chapter in Genesis? No, Genesis 22.

Genesis 22, the Lord says three times. So you've got that triunity of verses, right? You've got three times referenced. Your son, your only son. Your son, your only son. Your son, your only son. He says, well, yeah, but he says that at the beginning, he says it once, and then after the Lord stays his hand,

he calls Isaac his only son two times. Why, when he had Ishmael? And later on, he has more sons with Ketura after the death of Sarah. why would he say his only son? Well, it's to build a motif. It's to point to something the one who would be provided. And just like you see in Zechariah 12, where the only son motif is continued,

in the future tense through the prophet Zechariah, prophesying about 500 years before Christ, and it says they will look on him as in Israel, will look on him whom they pierce, and they will mourn for him as one mourn for an only son. As you can see David's slightly, passionate about this. Yeah.

Yeah. Would the title sound better if it was Abraham and Isaac? Or would it have more resonance being called his only son? And the way you just tie it all together in the film and throughout. And at the end, it's just, it's, uh, it fits. Once you watch it, you go, there's no other title for this movie. Yeah. So how did your service in Iraq make you realize, you know, come to that epiphany, as you mentioned,

that these were real people in the scriptures? because I think a lot of, you know, as you noted, a lot of people think, oh, these are, you know, these are stories, these are people who lived thousands of years ago, like, how can they be relevant to me? And your movie is making it concrete for people. Praise the Lord for one. I mean, glory to God for that, that the Lord would use it in such a way to draw people to the word and open people's eyes to not only the truth of his word, but ultimately the truth of his gospel, and that it can be trusted because he's had his plan. of redemption in place from the beginning.

My time in Iraq, so yeah, so I grew up in a Christian home and I asked Jesus in my heart whenever I was eight at church camp, but I was really just kind of living morally for moral's sake and I could just have whatever playground I wanted in my mind and do whatever I wanted in my mind and keep the outside of my tomb whitewashed, you know. But whenever I went to the Marine Corps, I didn't go to church for like three years, which kind of shows the state of my heart, even though I would profess to be a Christian and I would argue with with people about theology when I didn't even know anything about theology. And so, but it was totally pride-based.

But whenever I went to Iraq, by God's grace, I took my Bible with me. And it was a great study Bible. And I was spending a lot of time. So we spent the first part of the deployment in Ramadi. And then my team moved to Al-Tacetam, which is air base right next to this little town called Habanilla. It's in Al-Anbar province right on the edge of ancient Babylon. on, and we lived in one of Saddam Hussein's old missile bunkers, and I worked a lot at night,

so there was a lot of just a loneliness and time, essentially, in a hole in the ground, and I began to get really convicted about, I don't read my Bible, yet I call myself a Christian, and I got convicted over sin in my life, and it just got pressing more and more on me, and I got convicted, I leaned into the word. I started with First Samuel, actually, of all places, because I was like, well, I don't read it consistently where I'm going to start. And so I started, I was like, well, I'll start with the life of David. I'm David, so I'll start with the life of David. So I started in 1st Samuel.

And as I went through it, cross-referencing to the Gospels, to the epistles back and forth, just began to see the depth of my own sin and how just totally depraved I actually was. And the goodness of the gospel of Christ in that the Lord's standard is holiness. It's unattainable. So the Lord is so gracious he came and attained it for us. But he was put to death, the just for the unjust, so that he can. can conquer death and atone for death for all those who believe. And the proof of the conquering of death is his resurrection. And my eyes opening to the truth of that gospel, but then seeing these,

actually, what's interesting is, because we already talked about David and Solomon, but it was actually when I got to first kings, Solomon becomes king. The Lord appears to Solomon in a vision and says, you can ask me for anything. And the Lord says, well, I want wisdom so I can rule your people well. And the Lord's like, well, because you didn't ask me for riches and for military might, for horses, You're going to have all these more than anyone else, but I'm going to give you wisdom more than anyone's ever had. And I remember that moment when I was on my rack and when Saddam Hussein's old missile bunkers,

praying, Lord, if I could just have an inkling of understanding of who you are, an inkling of that wisdom so that my life wouldn't be lived in vain, and I could be used for you. And that's what I want to do. And it was like reading has always been difficult for me, and it still is difficult for me. It takes me forever to read stuff. but I love reading the word, and whenever it was no longer letters on a page anymore,

it was like faces on a screen. And it was like I could see their mannerisms, their facial expressions. I could see them move around the landscape. And I thought, man, if I can demonstrate this to people what I'm seeing, then people who aren't in their word, like I wasn't in my word, could see that this was real people, that, wait a minute, this actually makes sense. This doesn't seem like a fairy tale. This actually, this, for the first time I'm seeing this is real,

and they would want to go and dive into scripture for themselves and have their eyes open to the truth of the gospel as my eyes were. And, you know, what's so awesome about the Lord and so kind and good about him is that I'm hearing those testimonies now already from this film. And yeah, it's, yeah, I don't really even know what to make of it. It's oddly a very somber feeling of just like, it's like I'm just kind of like in all. I literally, the way I've described this last week so far is I feel like I'm walking through the Red Sea

and it's walled up on both sides, and I'm just looking up like, I don't have anything to do with this. I don't know what's going on. And even with Angel, bringing, like, finding this film, and we'll see in the trailer and say, oh, can we see a screener for this?

And then putting in front of the guild and getting the high score. And now, through what the Lord's gifted them in their expertise and their minds of analytics and all that kind of stuff and marketing, it's like going across the nation and across the world far beyond anything I could have asked or thought.

and it is incredible. Yeah, so Jordan, I want to talk a little bit more. I want to hear from you about Angel's business model and about how, you know, you discovered was his only son, like, fully created by the time you discovered it? Was it a complete package? Or, you know, what, how did that story go? Yeah, so, I mean, his only son gave us, I mean, going back to Angel's business model. So our mission is to tell stories that amplify light.

And we love that that allows us to tell stories like the chosen, like Tuttle Twins, which teaches kids about freedom and economics, like his only son, which teaches people about the Old Testament and Abraham and Isaac, we want to be a place where stories that amplify light, and we define that as whatever is lovely, true, honest, you know, excellent, worthy of praise, probably sounds like to be a Philippians 4. And so that to us is our northern. star, right? And so, but in order to preserve that north star, like we as founders and executives,

we don't want to be the gatekeepers like that has happened in Hollywood for the last, you know, 100 years. And don't get me wrong, Hollywood is some of the best storytellers in the world. Like, there's no doubt that they're the best storytellers in the world. That's a shame only because, you know, as Christians, the greatest storyteller of all time. is God and Christ. They are the greatest storytellers. And so we as, you know, their children should have, should have the ability to tell stories in such a more meaningful way. And so for us, that was really, really important.

And so we decided that instead of making us the gatekeepers, we are going to turn those keys over to the audience. And so we believe in what's called the wisdom of crowds. And we have what's called the Angel Guild. And the Angel Guild is comprised of all, like I said earlier, all the investors and the Chosen in Tuddle Twins and David movie and his only son now and all those people become guild members and they get access to prototypes and short films and we call those torches or completed films. In his only son case, he had spent five years by himself. You know, obviously, obviously we had a good crew and a great team and my and incredible actors. Yeah. Yeah. Thank

you. I mean, in the post work though, yes. I mean, I mean, his only son. His only son, team had been by themselves for five years basically trying to work this out and get it right and get it perfect and they did such an exceptional job but it got turned down by Hollywood and we looked at it and we said the guild loves this like they gave it one of the high we put the whole film through it and the guild came back and said this has to get out there and and so that's where we pull our signals from right like I loved I enjoyed the film but I but I wasn't like oh man this is going to be a top three in the box office opening weekend. Not because I didn't think the film was great.

I just didn't know. No, yeah, who thought? Who would have thought? Who would have thought? Like, God had a different plan than all of us. And so that being said, that guild gave us the first signal. And then we obviously help filmmakers crowd fund either their production budgets if they haven't done their project or in this case, P&A, their marketing for their

theatrical release. And that was also a first. That was a first. We had never done that before. We're going to be doing that more and more. a matter of fact, we announced a film last week called Sound of Freedom that's going to be coming into theaters later this year and we'll be crowdfunding, help assisting them if they open up a crowdfunding campaign for their, for their P&A. And so the...

And they also have their own rejection of Hollywood stories. They also have their own rejection of Hollywood's stories too. And so it's becoming this theme that there are incredible stories out there that Hollywood is not, the gatekeepers of Hollywood are not willing to tell. and we want to become an alternative to the Hollywood gatekeepers by handing over that power to the community, to the Angel Guild and saying, you tell us what you want, you tell us what's important to you.

And so we're thrilled the death that, you know, my brother Jeffrey, I think he tweeted last week where he just said, the Angel Guild is a perfect example of it finding a diamond in the rough that no one else could see or most people couldn't see and it knew that this was, was going to be successful. And that's because that's the audience, right?

And so that's kind of Angel's model is we really want to be this, this mechanism to connect the filmmakers to the audiences in such a powerful and meaningful way and then build audiences and communities around his only son. And now, you know, he's going up on the Jacob film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was announced during the theatrical release. Yeah, at the end of the credits. At the end of the credits.

Stay, if you watch, stay tuned to the after the credits. awesome announcement there, but you can see that it's how much express interest. I don't know. I don't look at it. It might be over 800,000. It's like seven, $800,000 of expressed interest of people saying, we want another movie. We're willing to invest in creating a production budget. And they haven't advertised this at all. It's just been living behind the credits of the theatrical version of the film. So it's just, it's a beautiful thing. But then going on top of that, we decided, you know what? We've got enough first here with the first time P&A crowd fund theatrical release and a and a first. And a first.

time doing a wide release of this sort for Angel. Why don't we throw in one more first? We had this crazy idea that, you know, obviously the chosen is blown up and been a worldwide success and dry bar is blown up and been a worldwide success. And both of them have done it inside of our free model where basically people are able to, once they watch the content and love it, they can buy merchandise, but they can also pay it forward to help other people watch it for free because we got to sustain this and keep it going. And so at the end, there's a call to action that says, If you love this, there are people who never have the money or resources to go watch films like this in theaters or any film in theaters, give them the opportunity to watch his only son in theaters.

And we've been blown away. We've had over 15,000 tickets paid for. And you can see that, angel.com slash pay it forward. And if you want to get your tickets as far as if you're somebody who can't afford to take your family this Easter or even in the weeks following Lord Willen to go and get your family. together and go and experience this film and what the Lord was doing in the life of Abraham. You go to angel.com slash free tickets. Yep, free tickets. Angel.com slash free tickets and go get your ticket as well. And it's been amazing just to watch as, you know, the momentum is built around this. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to see how even what we thought would be best case scenarios

has, you know, God knows more than we do. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us, Jordan and David. and best of luck and people can go to Angel Studios. Angel.com slash SunS-O-N to get your tickets. That's right. Angel.com slash pay it forward to buy tickets for others and angel.com slash free tickets to claim your free tickets. And that'll do it for today's episode. We do not have any shows tomorrow and observance of Good Friday.

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