Heads of Angel Studios Celebrate ‘Miracle After Miracle’ After Settling Lawsuit
By Movieguide® Contributor
Angel Studios is celebrating “miracle after miracle” after winning against media giants Disney and Warner Bros. Studios that almost caused the company to go under.
“Miracle after miracle after miracle,” said Jeffrey Harmon, who heads the company alongside his brother Neal. “We were under Disney’s lawsuit, spending so much money, trying to get revenue streams back up… betting the entire farm on THE CHOSEN and weeks away from being out of money.
“We should have lost, we really should have, but we didn’t,” Neal added. “We can’t take credit for that. It was a mixture of families stepping up and putting up $10 million for us to fight the battle.”
The settlement reached between Angel Studios and Disney and Warner Bros. was beneficial to both sides. The big studios’ assets and copyrights were protected, while Angel Studio’s streaming service, VidAngel, was able to rise out of bankruptcy.
In a statement about the settlement, Neal said:
“After a long and extremely difficult legal battle in one of the biggest copyright cases in decades, we have finally come to an agreement in which VidAngel can emerge from bankruptcy and move forward as a rapidly-growing company. As with any compromise, we had to make painfully difficult concessions to arrive at this agreement, as did Disney and Warner Brothers. We want to thank the team at Disney and Warner Brothers for negotiating this settlement in good faith. We also want to thank our fans and supporters, millions of people who have stood with us through thick and thin over the last four years of a battle that all-too-often looked lost and hopeless.”
Now, the studio can focus on creating clean entertainment for families.
Movieguide® previously reported on Angel Studio’s mission to bring audiences family-friendly and uplifting content:
Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon recently shared how his audience-first studio stands apart from Netflix, Disney+, and other content companies on the most recent episode of The Movieguide® Podcast.
“Angel studios is a crowdfunded movie studio that connects creators directly with their communities,” Movieguide® CEO Robert Baehr at NRB 2022. “Most people know the show THE CHOSEN. THE CHOSEN was created when Dallas Jenkins made a small, short film called THE SHEPHERD. We saw this short film and said, Hey, this is a really, really great concept, if you turn this into a TV show, we think that the crowd will want this made. And so we helped Dallas to crowdfund that project.”
“We also are the studio behind DRYBAR, which gets billions of views,” he added.
“We’re also behind TUTTLE TWINS and FREELANCERS and the [upcoming] Wingfeather Saga, which is written by Andrew Peterson… Our North Star is that the content that we distribute are stories that amplify light. We feel like there’s enough darkness and cynicism in the world, and we want to amplify those stories that give us hope.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t deal with hard things. But the way that they approach them will amplify light,” he added.
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