Film company Angel Studios has reportedly received approximately $50 million in financing to help revolutionize the entertainment industry.
First reported by the Christian Post (CP), the sources state that Gigafund, the venture capital firm that has backed Elon Musk's business SpaceX, has spearheaded the funding of this ambitious undertaking in an effort to transform the entertainment sector.
After being sued by Disney and Warner Bros. for copyright infringement over their entertainment platform, VidAngel, Neal and Jeffrey Harmon, creators of Angel Studios, have seen their yearly income increase by more than $100 million in only one year. CP noted that VidAngel, which was launched in 2013, was developed to assist families in filtering out profanity, nudity, violence, and other inappropriate material from movies and television shows.
Angel Studios' most recent endeavor, however, was the largest investment made by Gigafund in their most recent venture.
In a statement, Gigafund managing partner Stephen Oskoui said "Angel Studios helps creators build a direct relationship with their fans and produce meaningful and compelling content for hundreds of millions of people who have been underserved by the entertainment industry."
Oskoui believes that Angel Studios is on its way to rewriting the rules of the media industry to make important contributions to culture.
Other contributors to Angels Studios' success include initial seed investors Alta Ventures and Kickstart Fund, as well as $5 million in contributions directly from Angel Studios fans themselves. According to these organizations, the production company is revolutionizing the entertainment sector.
Angel Studios is reportedly preparing to release 300 titles in the next season, and CEO Neal Harmon is in charge of operations. All of the work that will be done over the following several years is expected to be of the same caliber as "The Chosen."
"This raise gives us more than funding; it gives us key strategic partners," he reportedly said. "Gigafund and Uncorrelated will help us realize our long-term mission of remaking the entertainment industry and freeing both creators and their fans to enjoy the content that they find most important."
In another statement, Harmon noted that the artists on Angel's platform are held accountable to their fans, not a Hollywood studio.
"As our creators invert Hollywood's abysmal 80 percent failure rate, audiences will win," he said.
Angel is aiming to compete with the $280 billion Hollywood sector, which is nearly entirely controlled by five big studios, in order to gain market share. According to a statement from the company, with this current amount of investment, the studio, "plans to continue improving its streaming platform, market to new audiences, and develop its content pipeline for 2022 and beyond."
This "community-driven movie studio" is described as empowering viewers to select what material is created and delivered while developing communities around each film. Content producers may now use the Angel platform to propose their ideas, and "Angel investors" can then join on board to fund the ideas they find most exciting.
To date, the crowdfunding method has created three of the most popular crowdfunded productions in history. Among them are:
A Christmas special for "The Chosen," reportedly the most successful crowdfunded media project ever.
As of its seventh season, "Dry Bar Comedy" is the most popular family-friendly stand-up comedy channel in the world.
The "Wingfeather Saga," the world's most popular crowdfunded animated children's program, is also well underway.
