The Affinity Economy in action
At Angel, 1.5M fans decide what gets made. The result: box office hits and a public listing.
This is a reader-supported publication. If you like what I do, help me keep doing it by upgrading to Streaming Made Easy Premium.
Independent film’s quiet revolution has a name: Angel (formerly Angel Studios).
Farmers turned tech marketers built a studio the old guard said was impossible and is taking it public at 9.30am EST today. You get to listen to all three founders (Neal Harmon - CEO, Jordan Harmon - President and Jeff Harmon - Chief of Content) on The Media Odyssey Podcast as they tell their company’s story BEFORE everyone else does.
This is not a “faith-only” label (and even if it was, we’re never short of innovative business models to study, right?). It is a values-based, data-first machine that turns community into greenlights and greenlights into box office hits. If you make, fund, or distribute films, you need to study their playbook.
In this episode, you will hear the exact model Angel created including: the Guild mechanics, the $55M raise (in 3 weeks), the box office math (we’re providing you a cheat sheet to facilitate your listening or watching - see below), their IPO and much more.
and I came out of this episode thinking: so simple (in its philosophy) and yet no one has done it before at this scale (stellar in its execution). Angel operates under 5 big ideas to revolutionise how films are being made:
Big idea #1 - Product built with the user, not for the user
They solved their own problem first. Family-ready stories, without guesswork. It scaled because millions wanted the same thing. As they put it, the Angel Guild “is a group of 1.5 million plus people” who vote and comment before anything moves. If the Guild “veto them, we cannot take them.”
Big Idea #2 - Funding flipped
Angel used the JOBS Act to turn fans into backers. “On Saturday, we reached 55 million dollars in commitments”. They hit the statutory cap “in 18 days”.
Big Idea #3 - Audience as gatekeeper
Jeff Harmon effectively fired the traditional CCO role. The Guild screens, scores, and gives notes. Result: so far a repeatable hit engine.
Big Idea #4 - Data + distribution in real time
They stitched direct pipes into exhibitors and ticketing. Then they marketed seats to the right audience: “You do not need 360M people to be aware, you need the right four to ten million to be”.
Big Idea #5 - Incentives that actually align with filmmakers
Angel’s mantra: transparency and upside. “We are technology and a marketing company.” They send two thirds of profits back to filmmakers and their investors after real costs. One producer asked if they “added a zero” to his royalty check. They hadn’t.
Are they profitable? Not yet. They lost $54 million in the first half of of the year, a 40% deeper loss than a year ago. Yet, their revenue has increased 3X to $135 million over 2024. Most of Angel’s losses stem from marketing costs aimed at growing their Angel Guild membership, which now stands at 1.5 million members. However, Guild membership generated $101 million in 1H 2025 - an increase of 517%. And don’t sleep on that $55 million raise from forty thousand adoring fans in less than three weeks.
Could the model be replicated across any genre in any market? Yes because fandom has no borders.
To get to the bottom of each big idea, you’ll have to listen or watch this week’s episode (yes sorry no shortcut to learn how movies can be produced with audiences, instead of for audiences). Also listen or watch until the end as we debate our question of the week on what this means for the movie industry at large.
LISTEN and/or WATCH in full: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE
N.B.: Neither nor I own any shares of Angel. We have never participated in their RegA+ Class C share offerings. Neither of us is being paid by Angle or any of their affiliates.
There’s no better way to make your own opinion than by testing their service. Grab this 20% discount on us: http://www.angel.com/TheMediaOdyssey.
COMING UP NEXT:
→ Streaming Made Easy Live takes place this afternoon in Amsterdam (full program and attendees here).
→ At IBC 2025, we will record two live episodes, on September 13th, one with the fantastic Whale TV team and another one with a CTO roundtable with ITV and SVT.
If you have time for one podcast only, let’s make it The Media Odyssey Podcast, produced with love from Amsterdam & NY.
That’s it for today but before you go:
