Angel Studios

A 20-minute YouTube 'ad' crowdfunded $11M from 17,000 investors

Angel ran The Chosen's short-film pilot as a full 20-minute YouTube ad that ended with a pitch to invest. 17,000 people put in $11 million, using about $800K of ad spend, and the show went on to reach about 200 million viewers.

“We could just take this same concept that we built for these 2, 3-minute ads and just go 20 minutes. Let's just do 20 minutes and see what happens, 'cause it's entertainment. And so, they watch 20 minutes, they're totally invested, and then we pitch 'em, come invest in this project, and let's make a TV series like the Game of Thrones for the New Testament. That's basically what it was at that time. And 17,000 people invested $11 million into The Chosen.”

Kevin James, a tux, and 12 empty Super Bowl seats

The Kevin James art-teacher campaign got over a billion views. It ended with a Super Bowl stunt: Angel bought 12 seats, sat James in the middle in his wedding costume with flowers, and placed influencers nearby to post 'is that Kevin James?' He ended up on the stadium screen without any commercial message.

“And I think that campaign got over a billion views. And then at the end of the campaign, on Super Bowl Sunday, which is the weekend before, before Valentine's Day, he showed up at the Super Bowl, and we bought 12 seats at the Super Bowl, and we put Kevin in the center of 12 empty seats. And he was in a tux with his flowers in the exact costume he is in the movie, his exact wardrobe.”

Angel's 3 million paying members can veto any film before release

Members of the Angel Guild pay a subscription, vote on every film headed to theaters, and get two tickets to each release. If the audience vetoes a film, Angel can't distribute it. Harmon calls this 'the user method at scale.'

“And what they're doing is, as a member of Angel, you get to vote on every movie that comes into Angel that goes to theaters. So, you get the chance, if you want to, you can go and you vote. And if you veto, if you, if the audience vetoes a film, we can't take it. We can't send it to theaters. We can't do anything.”

Steal thisGive paying members a binding vote on what you release, so curation and demand validation happen before you spend on distribution.

Sound of Freedom: a $14M film that grossed $250M worldwide

Harmon describes Angel as a base-hits business that gets the occasional home run. Sound of Freedom cost $14 million to make plus about $40 million in marketing, and grossed $250 million worldwide.

“I think we're a base hits business that gets home runs every once in a while. So we had Sound of Freedom was a home run, did $250 million worldwide. That was a $14 million movie.”

Hollywood has a cost problem, not a revenue problem

Harmon calls Hollywood a knife fight and quotes a retired executive who said his best friend in Hollywood was worse than his worst enemy in Las Vegas. He argues more money than ever is coming into the industry, and that Angel's job is to fix how much it costs to make and sell films.

“And our job as a business is to fix what's broken in Hollywood, because Hollywood hasn't been a good business. It has a— it's not that they don't have enough revenues. They have plenty of— I mean, there's more revenues coming into Hollywood than ever. And it historically has been America's biggest export is media, is movies. That's our number one export. But this industry, the Hollywood industry, has a cost problem, not a revenue problem.”

Angel Studios: $450M ARR from values-based streaming

Shaan says Angel Studios, a public studio and streamer of 'values-based' content with no cursing, drugs or sex, does about $450 million in ARR. Its founder came from the viral marketing team behind Poo-Pourri and Squatty Potty.

“$450 million in ARR. It's a public company. You can see their, their, their data. And the way they did it was they basically said they had a worldview. In fact, the guy who started it, he's this epic marketer. who did the marketing behind like Poo-Pourri and Squatty Potty.”

Angel Studios began as a 'clean' movie filter that got sued for $10M

The founder first built a filter that removed cursing, sex and drug scenes from Hollywood films, which Shaan calls a 'gluten-free movie.' He was sued and paid around $10M, but 100,000 people wanted the service, so he stopped fighting the studios and started making clean films and shows himself.

“And so he creates this filter and he publishes it. Uh, he publishes the movie and immediately gets sued and he ends up having to like pay $10 million in a lawsuit somewhere along the way. But he, this tool and these movies started attracting, um, a lot of people. So like 100,000 people eventually wanted like the service.”

Let paying members greenlight content with a 70% vote

Angel Studios shows trailers or clips of finished films to its roughly 2 million paying members. Anything under 70% approval is dropped. Shaan says this gives them better Rotten Tomatoes scores and hit rates than the major studios.

“So basically they'll take a, uh, a movie that's already made and they'll show the, the trailer or they'll show like a snippet of the movie to the 2 million members and the members vote. And if 70%, if less than 70% greenlight it, the deal's dead no matter what. But if more than 70% say yes, then the movie like kind of, uh, gets picked up by them and it's going to go into their marketing pipeline and whatnot.”

Steal thisBefore you commit marketing spend, let paying members vote on what you release and kill anything below a fixed approval threshold.