Angel Studios, the company behind the surprise box-office smash “Sound of Freedom,” is going public. The announcement last week of a merger for purposes of an IPO valued at $1.6 billion was a shock to the Hollywood system — especially because Angel Studios’ unique Angel Guild program already made it kind of public.
The faith-based distributor, raised from the remnants of the VidAngel app, is currently owned by its co-founder and CEO Neal Harmon and his brothers. But soon it could be you.
Angel Studios will merge with Southport Acquisition Company, a SPAC (special purposes acquisition company) that exists solely for this moment. (As if SPACs did not introduce enough confusion, the fact that this particular SPAC’s initials are basically SPAC — South-Port Acquisition Company — makes our heads spin.)
SPACs are often referred to as “blank-check” companies — basically, they are publicly-traded shell companies that exist solely to organize the financing necessary to purchase a real company, which then essentially takes the SPAC’s slot. They were huge in the dot-com era, but less common today.
The $1.6 billion valuation is quite a number based on Angel Studios’ reported revenue as disclosed in a September 11, 2024 filing with the SEC. Over the first six months of 2024, Angel Studios made just $45 million in revenue, up from the same period in 2023; the film “Cabrini” ($19.5 million at the box office) was its single-largest contributor. There was also “Sight” ($7.2 million). But it also earlier this month managed to raise $20 million.
Since then, its “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot” made $11.6 million. Up next are WWII spy drama “Bonhoeffer” and the post-apocalyptic family-survival drama “Homestead.” “Bonhoeffer” and “Homestead” have an uphill battle to be more “Sound of Freedom” ($250 million) than “Sound of Hope.”
So if you’d like a piece of that, you can wait until the transaction closes in the first half of 2025 — the price of shares is an unknown. Or you can own a piece of Angel Studios, today, and for likely much less money.
Angel Studios is an equity-crowdfunding organization, in which a group of private investors have a stake in the company and make decisions on what projects get the green light. That’s in part what allowed for Angel’s innovative “Pay It Forward” campaign for “Sound of Freedom” and its other releases, where a call to action at the end of the film allowed perfect strangers to buy a ticket for someone else. “Sound of Freedom” made $26 million this way.
As part of the IPO, Angel Guild members — all 375,000 of them — will have 100 percent of their equity rolled over into the new company. The company’s website is still accepting applications for new members.
That begs the question, what’s so different here? The Angel Guild is the company’s bread and butter — those members are not just a brain trust, they are paying for the privilege. In fact, as the company disclosed in its public offering announcement, it is one of the four ways Angel brings in revenue: membership fees from Angel Guild members, box office grosses from theatrical releases, content licensing when putting movies on streaming or for other potential licensing opportunities (can’t wait to see the “Sound of Freedom” video game!), and merchandise sales for DVDs and other products.
Angel Guild members under the current model pay a monthly or annual membership fee in order to hold equity in the company, as much as $19.99/month or $174.99/year for the top tier, and $12/month for a basic tier. Doing so lets them vote on the movies they want Angel to make, but it comes with access to stream movies early or free tickets to a film’s theatrical release.
The Angel Guild is not just a clever fundraising tool, however. It is also meant galvanize a fan base and give members a financial incentive to spread the word about the movies that matter to them. Angel Studios asks its members to identify whether a movie will “amplify light,” and if they’d be disappointed if such a movie didn’t exist. Basically, the Angel Guild does for inspirational films what Marie Kondo does for t-shirts.
While it’s unclear at present what existing owners’ equity will mean in terms of actual shares once Angel goes public, it is possible that ownership rules could change such that any shareholders in the new stock ticker “AGSD” will automatically get free access into the Guild. That would open the door for others to invest in a much smaller way, signing up for the guild and getting the perks without the larger financial risk, or investing in films on an individual basis and only supporting the titles they truly care about rather than the company as a whole.
By going public, Angel would presumably be able to expand its ability to do all those things on a wider scale.
Angel Studios declined to comment for this story.
From now until the morning the Harmon’s (probably) ring the opening bell on the Nasdaq or NY stock exchange (the company hasn’t disclosed which), Angel Studios will keep doing its thing. The studio has positioned itself as a solution to movies that fail at the box office under the presumption that they’re the product of a small group of Hollywood decision-makers rather than opening it up to a membership that decides what they want to watch. Saying Angel is truly public only bolsters that brand and shines an even bigger light on its halo.
