a service that allowed viewers to sanitize Hollywood movies<\/a> by erasing sex, violence and swear words. But in 2016, VidAngel was sued for copyright infringement by Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros., who said the company\u2019s business model \u2014 which involved purchasing thousands of DVDs and Blu-ray discs and allowing users to stream them online \u2014 was essentially piracy.<\/p>\nVidAngel eventually settled the case, and the Harmon brothers sold off the filtering business. The company rebranded as Angel Studios and kept its content production and crowdfunding operation.<\/p>\n
Today, the firm operates a streaming service and releases movies theatrically, including 2023\u2019s massively popular \u201cSound of Freedom,\u201d which grossed $250 million worldwide, and the animated film \u201cThe King of Kings,\u201d which came out in May and tells the story of Jesus. The studio focuses on what it calls \u201cvalues-based storytelling,\u201d and its slate is determined through the vote of its 1.5 million Angel Guild members, who also get free movie tickets and other perks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really a combination of the values of a broader audience,\u201d said Jordan Harmon, president. \u201cIf you look at movies like \u2018The Sound of Music,\u2019 or \u2018Casablanca\u2019 or \u201812 Angry Men,\u2019 all those were broad, incredible stories that touched the lives of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. Those are the type of stories that we think fall right into this values-driven, light-amplifying mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though considered small for Hollywood, Angel Studios moved to become a publicly traded company because its nearly 70,000 investors required it to, said company Chief Executive Neal Harmon. The company merged with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) called Southport Acquisition Corp. to go public. A SPAC is essentially a shell company that exists solely to buy a private company and take it public without the scrutiny of a traditional IPO.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re turning the way that this industry works on its head,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd because we are not doing the traditional Hollywood gatekeeper thing, we also needed to access capital in an untraditional way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The path is far from the potato farm in Idaho where the brothers grew up, and where the nearest neighbor was a quarter-mile away. Working together on the farm \u2014 and sharing a bedroom for years \u2014 helped foster the communication and bond between the brothers, said Jeff Harmon, chief content officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look in Hollywood, the best partnerships have all been brothers,\u201d he said, ticking off several successful movie business sibling partnerships including the Disneys, Warners and Nolans. \u201cWhen they actually work together really well, it becomes unstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSound of Freedom\u201d distributor Angel Studios made its stock market debut Thursday as the company looks to expand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11596,114,11600,1259,11594,11597,2085,85,46,11599,740,11602,11595,789,1730,11601,11598,11603],"class_list":["post-10658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-brother-neal","tag-business","tag-business-model","tag-company","tag-distributor-angel-studios","tag-freedom","tag-hollywood","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jordan-harmon","tag-movie","tag-potato-farm","tag-sound","tag-story","tag-streaming-service","tag-utah-based-firm","tag-vidangel","tag-walt-disney-co"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}