Angel Studios, the emerging film distributor whose crowd-driven model drove the success of left-field hit Sound of Freedom in 2023, is officially going public.
The company said it has closed its SPAC merger with Southport Acquisition Corp., and its shares will start public trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. SPACs are financial entities set up with the express purpose of executing acquisitions. Based on a number of market and economic conditions, SPACs wax and wane in popularity and involve a degree of risk, but they have been used effectively by companies like Draft Kings and Trump Media & Technology.
Angel Studios mitigates risk in the inherently volatile movie business by relying on the 1.5 million members of the Angel Guild. Select members offer financial and marketing support to titles as they come through the pipeline, helping to refine and fund projects. While it is commonly associated with faith-based titles, the scope of Angel’s slate is broader than explicitly Christian fare.
In announcing the close of the SPAC deal, the company said it completed a successful capital raise last Friday. The company’s shares will trade under the ticker symbol ANGX. Members of the company’s management team are scheduled to ring the NYSE’s closing bell Thursday.
Film is a cornerstone for Angel Studios, with the company’s ambitions on display last spring at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, but it has also fostered successful episodic series like The Chosen. In an interview with Deadline in March 2024, CEO Neal Harmon said the company was aiming for an IPO. He also described his upbringing as one of nine children raised in a Mormon family on an Idaho dairy farm. Two of his brothers are also execs working at Provo, UT-based Angel, and another runs one of its episodic series.
The Harmons became fluent in marketing, distribution and the workings of the internet after founding the streaming service VidAngel, which distributed sanitized versions of Hollywood titles. The company quickly found itself targeted by lawsuits by Disney, Warner Bros. and other studios, but Angel Studios wound up being born during that period of legal limbo.
With Jim Caviezel starring as real-life anti-child-trafficking activist Tim Ballard, Sound of Freedom became a left-field box office smash in the Barbenheimer summer of 2023, outdoing Hollywood titles like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Its global cume was $249.5 million, including $184.2 million in North America. While no subsequent Angel release has made that big of an impact, the company manages its costs and relies on its network of fans to know where to place its bets, unlike more traditional “gut-driven” studio operations.
In a statement, Harmon said the SPAC deal “marks a huge milestone for Angel and our 1.5 million-plus Guild members worldwide.” The company’s business model and technology, he added, are “leading a movement to reshape entertainment, empowering audiences as virtual co-producers. The Guild selects stories that amplify light and timeless values – curating a powerful library through greenlighting films and shows for theaters, TV, or Angel streaming – and we’re just getting started.”
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 is acting as legal advisor to Southport.
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