Utah-based Angel Studios, the company founded by three Mormon brothers attempting to upend the Hollywood system by allowing under-served audiences to help build a slate of faith-based and value-centric films, including 2023 sleeper hit Sound of Freedom, has found a new nesting ground.
On Thursday, Angel founders Neal, Daniel and Jeffrey Harmon rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange in celebration of becoming a publicly trading company under the ticker symbol ANGX, the result of a long-gestating SPAC merger that will infuse the company with cash as it seeks to disrupt the Hollywood establishment.
The company’s share price rose by 10%, suggesting an eagerness from the public to buy into their vision.
“Hollywood is out of touch with mainstream audiences,” Neal Harmon told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “This is a step in the process for us. We have 1.5 million Angels Guild members who are deciding what content we release, and then we have almost 70,000 investors to provide the liquidity. We have a mission that we’re trying to reach, and we need to fill up the gas tank. That’s what this process has done for us.”
Among the company’s digital marketing and crowdfunding innovations is, as Harmaon noted, its Angel Guild program, in which its members pay a monthly fee for access to the studio’s releases as well as a vote in the greenlight process of future films and TV series. Angel is also a pioneer in using crowdsourcing to raise money for marketing costs.
“Now that we have the tank full, it’s all about execution as long as we execute and we continue to grow the Guild, we had planned to list that when we had 1 million Guild members, now we have 1.5, so we’re ahead in that respect, but we now need to grow the Guild to 5 million Guild members and 10 and a hundred,” Harmon adds. “That’s what we intend to do is to grow this community and reach more people and the price of the stock will take care of itself. We’re not worried about it in the short term. There’ll be a lot of volatility in the short term, but this is a long term company.”
The outfit has endured its share of challenges, however, and was involved in an acrimonious breakup with the The Chosen filmmakers (the series was an early victory for Angel’s digital platforms).
Angel Studios opted not to go the traditional IPO route when deciding to go public. Rather it completed a SPAC merger with Southport Acquisition (SPAC stands for special purpose acquisition company) after securing a $100 million credit facility with Trinity Capital. The combined entity is valued an $1.6 billion in pro forma enterprise value.
Neal Harmon, co-founder and CEO, will continue to lead the company post-merger. Jordan Harmon is president, and Jeffrey Harmon is chief content officer.
Angel doesn’t turn out just faith-based fare. Its overall mission is to build a home for stories that “amplify light” and promote value-driven storytelling, such as Sound of Freedom, which earned north of $250 million at the global box office in summer and made Angel a household name. And its online platform carried the hit series The Chosen. To date, the company has released 36 films and 21 television series, whether in cinemas, on television or on its digital streaming platforms.
Most recently it released the 2024 comedy fantasy film Sketch.
According to the Harmons, Angel had the highest per-release domestic box office average of any independent studio from 2023-2025, including A24, Focus Features and Searchlight Studios. After Sound of Freedom, its biggest office win was this year’s animated The King of Kings, which earned north of $77 million globally. And in summer 2023, Angel became the talk of the town when Sound of Freedom outgrossed such event pics as Indiana Jones at the Dial of Destiny.
“The SPAC doesn’t exist anymore now that we’re a publicly traded company,” said Neal Harmon. “This vehicle allowed us to have control of the company in the public markets so that we can make sure that the Guild continues to call the shots and greenlight our films. Rather than being acquired or having some kind of a hostile takeover of Angel’s mission, we get to control the mission moving forward.”
Earlier this year, Angel was among the official studios presenting its slate to theater owners at CinemaCon. Upcoming Angel theatrical releases include The Senior, starring Michael Chiklis (Dec. 19) and the December release Zero A.D., starring Jim Caviezel and directed by Alejandro Monteverde, who directed Sound of Freedom.
Angel inked a 10-year deal with Monteverde last year.
And the company is beginning to pursue a more aggressive international strategy, taking its films around the world.
The company was born out of the collapse of the Harmon Brothers’ previous endeavor, VidAngel, which distributed versions of Hollywood studio films, edited to make them “family-friendly.” In 2016, the majors, including Disney, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm, filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against VidAngel, alleging copyright violation. The studios won $62.4 million in damages, eventually reduced to a $9.9 million settlement after VidAngel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Rebranded as Angel Studios in 2021, the company shifted focused to producing and distributing original content through equity crowdfunding. Despite the pivot, Angel Studios has encountered further legal disputes, notably with the producers of Biblically-themed TV series The Chosen, which resulted in an arbitration ruling that Angel Studios breached its contract and was ordered to pay $5 million in fees and costs.
Roth Capital Partners and Lake Street are serving as capital markets advisors to Angel. Oppenheimer & Co. is serving as financial and capital markets advisor to Southport. Mayer Brown LLP is acting as legal advisor to Angel, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to Southport.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hollywoodreporter.com ’
