Angel Studios Statement on Arbitration with The Chosen
(PROVO, Utah — May 30, 2024) Angel Studios, the platform turning the Hollywood gatekeeper model on its head by giving the green light power to the audience who are members of the Angel Guild, is releasing a statement from Neal Harmon, CEO of Angel Studios, regarding Angel’s position on The Chosen:
“The team at Angel Studios is honored to have been instrumental in the founding and unbelievable growth of The Chosen. Our long hours of hard work over the last 8 years by teams of programmers, marketers, translators, licensing experts, and innovators have helped it become the worldwide success that it is today.
“Sadly, The Chosen, Inc. chose to terminate its agreement with us. We hope that one day the agreement will be restored—and we plan to pursue the appeal provision that Angel and The Chosen agreed to as the process for resolving disagreements privately.”
As shown in a blog post HERE, Angel posted an update for fans, including a 24:55 video that shares over 35,000 names of the 884,802 people (most decided to remain anonymous) who paid it forward 2,078,409 times to support The Chosen via Angel for each season of the series. It also includes many of over 16k Angel users who invested about $11M in the show to make the inaugural season many years ago. Since the release of that Season One, Angel Studios has sent $115,189,337.27 in royalties to The Chosen.
With the help of our Angel investors, Angel Studios was able to support The Chosen in a myriad of ways, including:
- Built an audience of over 106 million people worldwide and over half a billion views of The Chosen episodes (including views outside The Chosen app)
- Architected the marketing for the #1 Crowdfunded media project of all time (as of Jan 2019).
- Licensed The Chosen to 100+ worldwide distribution partners and streaming platforms in 27 countries (including Netflix, Amazon, Delta, and Peacock)
- Invented the Pay-It-Forward business model
- Completed professional dubbing in 11 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, with subtitles in 67 languages
- Engineered many apps, helping The Chosen reach the Top-5 most searched titles on Roku
- Released two record-setting theatrical events (#4 nationally with Christmas with The Chosen in 2021 and #3 nationally with The Chosen Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2 in 2022), pioneering event-cinema theatrical releases of a television show
- Led publicity initiatives to promote the series, including establishing relationships with leaders in America and around the globe
- Launched a community for fans of The Chosen to share how Jesus has impacted their lives and to thank those who have made the show free via Pay it Forward
Angel Studios asks fans to continue to support the goal of bringing The Chosen to one billion people around the world.
About Angel Studios: Angel Studios is the home of stories that amplify light. Through the Angel Guild, 311,000 members choose which film and television projects the studio will market and distribute. The studio enables creators and audiences to form passionate communities around creative projects, making the story behind the story as important as the final project. 104,000 Angel Guild members in 155 countries have invested nearly $80M in projects distributed by the studio to date. Angel Studios is behind the global box office hit, SOUND OF FREEDOM, which has earned $250 million in theatrical box office. Learn more at Angel.com