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SALT LAKE CITY — Formed in a pivot from its previous business as a video filtering service, Angel Studios has leveraged a unique model to fund and distribute movie and TV content, finding early success with the child trafficking film "Sound of Freedom," which earned a spot as one of the top grossing films last year.
In a plan announced Wednesday, Angel Studios said it was merging with Southport Acquisition Corporation in a Special Purpose Acquisition Company deal worth $1.6 billion that, on closing, will lead to Angel Studios stock trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ exchange under ticker symbol "AGSD."
Angel Studios co-founder and CEO Neal Harmon will continue to lead the combined company following the closing of the transaction.
Angel Studios, which describes itself as a "values-based distribution company for stories that amplify light to mainstream audiences," said it released its first theatrical film, "His Only Son," in March 2023, grossing approximately $13.5 million at the box office. Angel Studio's following film, "Sound of Freedom," grossed about $250 million at the box office and became one of the top 10 grossing domestic films in the United States in 2023.
Angel Studios leveraged a crowdfunding campaign to make "Sound of Freedom," raising the funds it needed in just a week. When it was in theaters, the company introduced a unique "pay-it-forward" model in which ticket buyers could choose to buy tickets for strangers, according to a report from Associated Press. Angel Studios says it resulted in nearly 2 million additional people seeing the movie.
The company also utilizes a novel system to decide which ideas for new TV and movie productions actually get made.
According to Angel Studios, 375,000 investors and subscribers comprise a group the company calls the Angel Guild that chooses which film and television projects the studio will market and distribute. The Angel Guild includes 104,000 members in 155 countries who have invested nearly $80 million in projects distributed by the studio to date, according to the company.
Back in 2020, the creators of video filtering business VidAngel announced they had sold the company and rebranded as Angel Studios. The new platform launched with $5 million in crowdfunding aiming to build "new technology that will put the power of television into the hands of the people who are actually watching it."
"We tested the concept with 'The Chosen' which has surpassed $30 million in revenue on season one in 2020 alone, funded the production of the next season entirely from sales, and prepared season two for release for this spring," Harmon said at the time of the announcement. "We are building a film studio platform that helps creators and viewers create high-quality TV and film without having to answer to the Hollywood gatekeepers."
"The Chosen," a historical drama series that follows the life of Jesus and his apostles, set a record for crowd-sourcing production and distribution costs, raising $100 million over its first four seasons, according to a report earlier this year from the BBC.
Angel Studios says its Angel Guild has proven an effective tool in screening prospective productions and has helped the company earn an average Rotten Tomatoes wide-release audience score of 95%.
"Angel Guild members are the secret sauce behind the discovery of global hits like 'Sound of Freedom,' 'His Only Son,' 'Cabrini,' 'Tuttle Twins,' 'Dry Bar Comedy' and other hit movies and television shows," the company said in a press release. "Angel Studios was one of the top 10 studios in the U.S. domestic box office in 2023, surging past Amazon's MGM and A24."
Angel Studios precursor, VidAngel, lost a multimillion-dollar 2019 verdict after years of legal wrangling in which Disney, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox argued VidAngel infringed on their copyrighted content by ripping copies of movie discs, copying them and streaming them to customers for $1 per movie.
The plaintiffs argued that in some cases, VidAngel was streaming content before it became available on licensed streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and others.
VidAngel offers a service that filters out content of movies and television shows that may be objectionable to some viewers like nudity, profanity and violence.
