Marvel, Disney, Warner Bros. Wage War on Family-Friendly Platform
VidAngel has been engaged in a protracted legal battle with Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, Marvel and Turner Entertainment. These seven Hollywood studios are seeking to eliminate filtering and choice, arguing that the 2005 Family Movie Act—a law that expressly permits filtering in the home—does not apply to modern devices and should remain legal only for outdated technology. In response, VidAngel has mounted a robust legal defense. Today’s filing represents another legal step to protect the future of filtering.
Neal Harmon, VidAngel CEO, has issued the following statement:
We have filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11. It’s an important step to protect our company—as well as its creditors, investors and customers—from the plaintiffs’ efforts to deny families their legal right to watch filtered content on modern devices. It also gives us breathing room to reorganize our business around the new streaming platform, promote and perfect the new technology and seek a legal determination that the new system is fully legal and not subject to the preliminary injunction entered in California.
It’s important for our fans to know that VidAngel will continue to offer our filtering service, and to add new content and new customers during the reorganization process. We are also actively hiring additional engineers to further accelerate the continued development of VidAngel. Our original series, Dry Bar Comedy, is exploding and has had over 16 million minutes viewed in the last seven days. Our customers can filter movies on Amazon, Netflix and HBO on Amazon, and we still have millions in the bank to fight this all the way.
