It took less than a week for a new, faith-friendly studio to fulfill its very first turning point. VidAngel, the business providing content filtering services to concerned parents, successfully pivoted to become Angel Studios on March 18th. The rebranded endeavor pledged to raise $5 million as part of its crowdfunding-fueled idea, in part to money for an improved streaming app. The studio lets audiences select the tasks they produce, leaning on the crowdfunding design for both feedback and financing.
The business raised $1 million in the very first 20 hours and satisfied the $5 million limit by March 24.
Angel Studios uses material the whole household can view, like clean stand-up productions (” Dry Bar Comedy”) and “Freelancers,” a situational comedy about millennials attempting to run a video production business…
The minds behind the studio are no strangers to crowdfunding. They leaned on it to money “The Chosen” television series, a program following the life of Jesus Christ. That project created a shocking $10 million from individuals excited to see such a series.
“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,” Neal Harmon, CEO of Angel Studios, said in a statement.
The second season of “The Chosen” debuts on April 4– Easter Sunday.
The brand-new studio, Harmon’s group hopes, enables writers to work around “Hollywood gatekeepers” to produce faith and family-friendly fare. Other jobs related to the freshly formed studio consist of “Tuttle Twins,” an animated series based upon libertarian concepts that formerly made $1 million through a 2020 crowdfunding project.
The business produced more than $47 million overall last year by means of initial content earnings.
VidAngel’s filtering service continues as a different entity after years of legal battles with studio giants like Disney over the capability to modify existing products.
The Utah-based VidAngel settled with Disney and Warner Bros. in September after a lengthy legal battle, promising to pay the studios $9.9 million over the next 14 years.
Filmmaker Spencer Folmar states he didn’t check out Angel Studios in any mainstream home entertainment press. Facebook’s advertisement targeting signaled him to the endeavor…
That, plus an existing network of 30,000-plus “financiers” from the business’s VidAngel days, assisted promote the launch.
Folmar, known for movies like “Generational Sins” that fuse faith with a grittier, real-life technique, states Christian audiences might be much better served by Angel Studios than standard Hollywood material.
“I see Christians doing more independent work, and it’s better received, better quality,” Folmar says.
The stunning success of 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ” opened Hollywood’s eyes to an untapped Christian market. Ever since, independent filmmakers and studios, like Sony’s Affirm platform, have actually brought faith-based films to the market with mixed-to-strong outcomes.
Some, like the big-budget “Noah,” didn’t take “Passion”- sized numbers, while micro-indies such as “War Room” and “God’s Not Dead” created substantial revenues.
” The Chosen” showed among the category’s larger successes, snagging strong reviews and significant customer interest.
Folmar states it still will not be simple for Angel Studios moving on as it completes versus a greatly financed landscape of fresh material.
“Five million is a great raise, but that’s not even a marketing budget on a studio picture,” he says. If Angel Studios wants to make, say, a Biblical epic, it will require $100 million for the budget alone.
“Money will always be an issue,” he says.
The studio might remain on a smaller-sized scale, however, echoing its success with “The Chosen.” Folmar called that reveal “incredibly relatable” in spite of productions that can frequently be taken too seriously.
Producer/director Matt Edwards (” Can We Take a Joke?”) states crowdfunding fatigue could be a factor in the business’s ongoing success. Still, considering the preliminary interest in spite of little media coverage, the $5 million figure suggests an optimistic future for Angel Studios.
“As long as the creators are able to raise the funds and deliver on the product they promised, I don’t see how this thing can fail,” Edwards says.
Plus, the early figures highlight a need in the marketplace for fare like “The Chosen” and “Freelancers.”
“There’s a huge underserved market in the country,” Edwards says.
H/T Just The News
