A small, independent studio has surprised Hollywood in the last few months with two films opening in the top three at the box office—and staying there for weeks.
And here’s the company’s secret formula. Angel Studios is putting its audience in the driver’s seat. It’s allowing viewers to decide what film and TV projects it green-lights and works to fund.
One of those successful films is “Sound of Freedom.” It opened on the Fourth of July as a summer surprise to critics, and so far it has already pulled in more than $100 million at the box office. It finished number one on opening weekend and finished at number two this past weekend, behind the latest installment of the blockbuster series “Mission: Impossible.”
In April, “His Only Son” scored headlines opening at number three with nearly $6 million in ticket sales. And that film’s director completed the project with only $250,000.
Without much Hollywood support, the record-making, crowd-funded series “The Chosen” had three successful seasons before being picked up by Lionsgate for worldwide distribution in May.
The engine behind these stunners isn’t in New York or Los Angeles. It’s in Provo, Utah. The city has a population of about 120,000. It’s a land of towering mountains and waterfalls.
Angel Studios was started by brothers Jeffrey and Neal Harmon. They are disrupting the entertainment world, but it’s been an uphill climb. A little more than five years ago, they ran a streaming platform that faced a major lawsuit from Disney.
Neal recalled that time in an interview with CBN News’ Studio 5 at Angel Studios’ comedy club, The Dry Bar.
“I was terrified when I first saw the lawsuit and shocked that it was Disney. But, I remember standing up and saying to people, ‘I am not exactly sure how this is going to turn out, but I believe that the audience, we, and Hollywood will be better off for it’,” he told CBN News.
Disney sued the Harmons’ VidAngel platform for copyright infringement because the platform gave home audiences the ability to filter out any material that they didn’t want to see or hear in its films.
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