June 22, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
47:48
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is what you're fighting for. | ||
| I mean, every day you're out there. | ||
| What they're doing is blowing people off. | ||
| If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians get total control and total power. | ||
| Because this is just like in Arizona. | ||
| This is just like in Georgia. | ||
| It's another element that backs them into a quarter and shows their lies and misrepresentations. | ||
| This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged. | ||
| As we've told you, this is the fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | |
| War Room. Battleground. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| How'd that make you feel? | ||
| Giving a child is freedom. | ||
| It felt good. | ||
| You have been at this for 12 years. | ||
| My country, tis of thee. | ||
| Why are you doing it? Because God's children are not for sale. | ||
| It is the fastest growing international crime network that the world has ever seen. | ||
| For Homeland Security, you know we can't go off rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia. | ||
| This job tears you to pieces. | ||
| And this is my one chance to put those pieces back together. | ||
| And yet, somehow, you have failed to bring me one real-world lead. | ||
| It's over, Tim. Close up, and come back home. | ||
| So you quit your job and you go and rescue those kids. | ||
| Let freedom ring. | ||
| Let freedom ring. | ||
| The South of the river is all rebel territory. | ||
| No one goes in. | ||
| What if this is your daughter? | ||
| She's gone. | ||
| Me The freedom Me Hear that? | ||
| That's the sound of freedom Sound of freedom is one of those films that can legitimately change this world to this world. | ||
| So we want to ignite a fire in audiences and open their eyes to the dark reality of millions of children that need our help. | ||
| Let's make this film a historic event and a start at the end of child trafficking. | ||
| Theatres across this country are already selling out. | ||
| Pre-order your tickets today and you can send the message that God's children are no longer for sale. | ||
| It's Wednesday, 21 June, Year of the Lord 2023. | ||
| Thank you. You're here for the second hour of the evening edition of The War Room. | ||
| I want to thank you. I'm here with Jordan, who is the co-founder, Jordan Harmon, one of the Harmon brothers. | ||
|
unidentified
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One of the many. There's like 35 of us. | |
| One of the co-founders of Angel Studio. | ||
| This, as we've gotten involved with this film, it has gotten a tremendous response. | ||
| Huge premiere last night. | ||
| You're going to Miami for one there. | ||
| A response here today, I know, on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Talk to us. I met with these guys two or three years ago, and they were finished the principal photography. | ||
|
unidentified
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They're starting to edit. | |
| And I said when I just saw Rushes and saw Daly, I said this thing is so, you know, the Sound of Freedom, the story of Tim Ballard is so powerful, you know, I'm sure you guys will find a distributor. | ||
| Yet this thing was suppressed for years. | ||
| It took Angel Studios to step in here and really take the ball. | ||
| You're the distributor of the film, you're marketing the film. | ||
| Walk through, why is this more, and I got this last night at the premiere and then today, the buzz on Capitol Hill, why is this more than just a movie? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so I mean, honestly for us, we look at this film, and Alejandro says it, the director says it really well. | |
| He says, this for us is the start of a movement, right? | ||
| We want this to be a movement that can bring awareness to this incredibly disturbing topic of child trafficking. | ||
| Child sex trafficking. Child sex trafficking, yes. | ||
| This is not for labor. I mean, some of that may happen, but this is either child sex or even as Jim brought up. | ||
|
unidentified
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There's horrendous things. | |
| Very dark. | ||
|
unidentified
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And so when we look at this film, we had actually known about the film for years, but Fox had originally had the rights, and then Disney acquired Fox, and for whatever reason they decided not to distribute it, and it took Eduardo a year to get the rights back. | |
| And then there was this miraculous moment about three months ago. | ||
| Where Tim Ballard, we've been friends with him for a long time. | ||
| He reached out to us and he said, guys, you're building something special. | ||
| You've launched a theatrical division. | ||
| Why don't you take on Sound of Freedom? | ||
| We'd love to explore that and see what that looks like. | ||
| But how likely is that even possible? | ||
| He says, well, let me connect you to the producer, Eduardo. | ||
| And within five days, we had pulled together Eduardo, Jim, us, all the principals. | ||
| You made the deal. But it's unheard of. | ||
| And then even crazier was we had this, and I don't want to get into the details, but there was this inspiration throughout the company that we felt that this movie needed to come out on July 4th, which for those who understand that... | ||
| July is the blockbuster month. | ||
| You've got Mission Impossible. You've got Nina Jones the week before. | ||
| You've got all these massive blockbusters. Well, it's always big summer movie weekend. | ||
| Huge movies. But this weekend, you've got the Tom Cruise and you've got two franchises. | ||
|
unidentified
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Massive franchises. | |
| And so everybody in Hollywood was saying, anybody who consulted us was like, you guys are crazy. | ||
| You don't go, like, well, they first said we were crazy because when we did his only son at Easter, Easter is the third biggest time to release. | ||
| You know, it's summer, Christmas, and then Easter. | ||
| And we picked Easter, and they're like, you guys, and then his only son ended up in the top three of the box office, and then people were like, how'd you do that? | ||
| Well... There's this element where Angel is a very unique process in that even if I love a movie with all my heart as executives and founders, we cannot greenlight a movie without the permission of the Angel Guild. | ||
| That's the 100,000 investors. | ||
| Explain the guild. Yeah, that's the investors and the chosen. | ||
| You know, the people who helped make that come about, the investors in Drybar, the investors in Teletwins, the kids' series about freedom and economics. | ||
| All of these investors and all of Angel Original projects are now the gatekeepers for what is an Angel Original or an Angel Project. | ||
| And so when we look at Hollywood, Hollywood has become the best storytellers in the world. | ||
| There's no one as good at storytelling as Hollywood. | ||
| And the problem is not so much the storytellers as it is the gatekeepers who dictate what stories are told. | ||
| And the gatekeepers being the studios and the distribution people. | ||
| That's right. How are you going to get it out to a broad audience and monetize it? | ||
|
unidentified
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100%. And so what we want to do with Angel and what we're dedicating our life to is we want to create something That will allow for the stories that reflect light. | |
| That's our mission is to tell stories that amplify light. | ||
| That those stories, long after we're gone, that this company can continue on that trajectory because we don't want to just create, you know, Disney 2.0 or whatever you want to call it, right? | ||
| And so in our mind... | ||
| You're saying there are other people out there who can do that. | ||
|
unidentified
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You want to do something that's very special. We want to do something that's very, very unique and that our... | |
| Studio will always be telling stories that amplify light and so that's why Sound of Freedom is so unique and so special because it is a story That amplifies light in the most magnificent way. | ||
| We define light as whatever is lovely, true, honest, noble, just, authentic, excellent. | ||
| Those principles have to be followed. | ||
| And Alejandro Monteverde, the director, I remember him telling us, he said, I intentionally, in every frame of this movie, no matter how dark the scene is, Had a sliver of light coming in. | ||
| Every frame. Because I wanted people to understand that this is about hope. | ||
| This is about the light at the end of those dark tunnels. | ||
| And so we are so grateful to be able to get this movie out in the world, to bring awareness, and to give a voice to these children who have been voiceless for so long. | ||
| Go to angel.com slash worm right now to get your tickets, and you should buy a grunge on them. | ||
| Here's why. Take people. | ||
| We're trying to send a message. First off, this film and seeing it will change your life, as it did mine, because as I've told people, this is not my line of country, but this is a scourge. | ||
| It has to be stopped, and particularly to know that in the United States of America, the greatest republic in the history of mankind, that we're the drivers of this because of the demand for child sex trafficking. | ||
| It's just horrific. So that's why this film, Sound of Freedom, is a must-see, and take your friends, take your colleagues. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it's important that you guys buy tickets today. | |
| Yes. Because we're trying to show the theaters that, hey, they're going to fill them up. | ||
| This is the exhibitors. Plus add more screens. | ||
| Yes. Remember, you've got Indiana Jones and you've got the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible. | ||
|
unidentified
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The week before and the week after. | |
| You guys are crazy. Because the theaters all book all those screens, so when you go to these multiplexes, the way you get the message out there is you have the big screens, and then you have some of these smaller screens, and that's where you need to book out. | ||
| That's exactly right. You guys, your target is 4,000 screens. | ||
|
unidentified
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We are going for 3,000 to 4,000 screens, and we believe that the doors will be opened. | |
| We keep saying something I've been saying to some people around the offices. | ||
| It's requiring astonishing work, but we're receiving miraculous outcomes. | ||
| It's miracles. And the doors are being opened. | ||
| And the reason I think the doors are being opened is because Steve Jobs once said that the most powerful person on earth is the storyteller. | ||
| And the stories that are being told today is what our culture and our world will look like in 20, 30 years. | ||
| And so the reason Sound of Freedom is so important is because in 20, 30 years, Child sex trafficking cannot be in our culture. | ||
| It has to die. | ||
| And you're saying this is the railhead of how you make it die because you're going to make this a mass movement. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're going to make it a mass movement and give a voice to these children in such an incredible way. | |
| Again, it is a lot of people go, man, it's probably going to be such a difficult movie to watch. | ||
| And my wife, she's very sensitive about what content media comes into our home. | ||
| And we watched it together and she said, man, that was difficult to watch. | ||
| But It's even more difficult if I had not watched it and not felt that movement in my own heart to drive something in and it might be as simple as you watch the film and your sphere of influence is your family and you take better care of your family and your kids or it might be that someone sees the film that has the ability to impact on a broader scale but the only way that happens is if we can get two million people there opening week for the two million kids that are trafficked every year. | ||
| Here's one of the things about the film, and this is why you could tell that people didn't want this to come out. | ||
| The quality of the film is like Missing or Taken or films like this. | ||
| The quality of the film is as good or even better than the best of the Hollywood product. | ||
| That's why I think the director is a genius. | ||
| And to know the quality of that, it is about a dark topic. | ||
| But you'll sit there like last night. | ||
| People are mesmerized just about the story. | ||
| Ballard's story is incredible. | ||
| People have to understand that Tim Ballard was an agent of DHS. I mean, this was his job. | ||
| And they talk about this balance of you have five agents on drug trafficking and every one agent on human trafficking. | ||
| And Ballard, one of the key parts of the story, is how DHS wanted to get off the mission. | ||
| And really, Caviezel playing Ballard, you see that he's mission-oriented, and that's the power of this movie. | ||
| But clearly, for a host of reasons, people did not want this film. | ||
| Until you guys got involved, people did not want this film in theaters. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, and I think that, you know, for us, We are looking at this and we are saying, to your point, the storytelling of this is on par with any other film in the world. | |
| As a matter of fact, it's powerful enough that if the awards were probably accurate to 100%, there would be Oscars given to this film. | ||
| It's just an incredible masterpiece. | ||
| Talk to me about the 35 Harmon Brothers. | ||
| How did you? | ||
| Jordan is one of the co-founders. | ||
| Of course, there's 34 others. | ||
| Talk to me about Angel and particularly how you guys got started in Chosen. | ||
| Because that has been such a cultural... | ||
| And I think it's a huge benefit to this film. | ||
| When they called me up and said, we have a distributor. | ||
| I go, who's that? It goes, the guys that distributed and were involved in Chosen. | ||
| I go, yeah, I think it's pretty good. | ||
| I think you're in good hands. | ||
|
unidentified
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So there's nine of us siblings. | |
| There's six boys, three girls. | ||
| So not quite 35, but we're up there. | ||
| It just seems like it sometimes. It just seems like it. | ||
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unidentified
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Nine brothers. There's six boys, three girls. | |
| So if you think their brothers are impressive, wait till you meet the sisters. | ||
| But it was about 2013. | ||
| I was living with my wife in the basement and my brother Neil, who's also a co-founder who you've met, was living upstairs with his family. | ||
| And we had just been looking at the media landscape, and we realized that it was spiraling very quickly. | ||
| And we didn't like what we were seeing. | ||
| And so, you know, we decided that we... | ||
| The content itself. The content itself. | ||
| The media and the content was not reflecting what we wanted for our children and our families. | ||
| And we all have kids. I have five kids. | ||
| He has ten kids. And so when we looked at that, we said, well, you know... | ||
| Let's figure out a way to do something about this. | ||
| And so we started with this idea that what if we could build an audience around skipping and muting content? | ||
| Because we knew parents would want the ability to skip and mute content that they found objectionable in their home. | ||
| And so we started with that concept of building an audience around that, and then we launched a studio. | ||
| You mean you wanted a technological? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, we're going to build a tech that people would subscribe to, and we'd build an audience around that. | |
| And that was called Vid Angel. It might be the Disney content, but they had the ability to take it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, like, you know, I don't want to hear the F word, or I don't want to see this violent scene or this sex scene or whatever it is. | |
| And so we launched that, and it really started to blow up around 2015. | ||
| And then Disney sued us in 2016. | ||
| Disney, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilms. | ||
| And that was devastating and a blow to the heart. | ||
| Upon further review, they didn't think that was such a great idea. | ||
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unidentified
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They didn't love our business plan. | |
| Mute this, dude. But you knew you had struck a chord. | ||
| Yeah, and what ended up happening was we had to launch our studio a lot earlier than we were expecting to. | ||
| But what also ended up happening is our audience came to us and they said, we love what you guys are doing, what you stand for. | ||
| We want this to exist. | ||
| And so they started donating hundreds of thousands. | ||
| We had over, I think, $300,000 in five months, which sounds like a lot, but in a Disney lawsuit, that's about three weeks of legal fees, right? | ||
| And so we decided right about that time that the JOBS Act had come out, which allowed for small companies to do what's called equity crowdfunding. | ||
| And so we said to our audience, you know what? | ||
| You're asking us to fight this. | ||
| We're willing to fight it to the Supreme Court. | ||
| We want to stand for what we believe in. | ||
| We don't have the resources to do it. | ||
| If you want to support us and you want to invest in VidAngel at the time, now Angel Studios, then you can invest, but you're probably going to lose your money. | ||
| I mean, this is a long shot, but we're willing to fight it. | ||
| And in five days, we raised over $10 million. | ||
| Wow. And we took $5 million, and that's how we started Drybar and The Chosen. | ||
| And then the other $5 million we used for legal fees. | ||
| And so, you know, obviously Drybar Comedy now gets over a billion views a year and is the largest library of clean stand-up comedy. | ||
| And then The Chosen, you know, we had the honor of meeting Dallas Jenkins and his incredible vision around what he called the shepherd at the time. | ||
| And so that we launched an equity crowdfund, helped them launch an equity crowdfund that We've funded season one, and then the rest is history. | ||
| You know, The Chosen turned into this massive, over 130 million viewers that we've gotten it to worldwide. | ||
| And it's been, you know, it's on obviously the Angel app and the Chosen app, and it's on many streaming platforms. | ||
| But the point of all this Is going back to the core of our mission, which was we actually didn't really want to take on a show about Jesus first because we didn't want people to look at us and say, you're a Christian studio. | ||
| You know, we obviously want to be faith friendly. | ||
| We want to be at any stories of faith and live in our environment, but we want to tell stories that impact the culture and are of the quality of anything else out there. | ||
| And so when we... | ||
| Jesus had other ideas. | ||
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unidentified
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Jesus had other ideas. | |
| He had another idea. How about this? | ||
| And so The Chosen has been such a blessing. | ||
| Dallas and his team have done such an incredible job. | ||
| I want to make sure people understand this. | ||
| Given the structure of the industry, The Chosen is, it's miraculous, but it's miraculous through human agency. | ||
| The ability to pull together the quality of film, because that's as good as anything you're ever going to see. | ||
| To see the quality of the acting, the quality of the filmmaking, and the way you guys distributed it and got it out to an audience. | ||
| That is like, you took the best in Hollywood And from a standing start presented, I think it gave a lot of faith or confidence to a lot of filmmakers that haven't had a chance to get their product to market. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, for sure. And our skill sets have been in business and marketing even more than they were in film. | |
| To be honest, we didn't even come from a business and marketing background. | ||
| We're Idaho farm boys. | ||
| We grew up on a potato farm and dairy farm and we worked for farmers and we learned to work and we learned we didn't want to be farmers. | ||
| That's just a hard job. | ||
| It's such a hard job. | ||
| That being said, As tough as Hollywood is, it's easier. | ||
| It's easier. Farmers' lives are hard. | ||
| But that being said, we love stories. | ||
| We loved hearing the stories from our mother of Roy and Walt Disney and what they did as entrepreneurs and the stories they told and the impact they wanted to have. | ||
| And so The Chosen and Drybar have given us the mechanism to build this incredible network of tens of millions and now hundred-plus million people who are rallying around stories that amplify light. | ||
| And every story that comes into that network, our goal is that in 20, 30, 40 years, when we're gone, that our children and our grandchildren will have the stories that will not only amplify light, but will help heal the culture that we live in today. | ||
| When The Chosen started to become a thing, right, when it started to get hot, what was the lesson you guys took for there? | ||
| Because obviously the odds were so long against this from the beginning. | ||
| Once it became not just a great work of art, but a kind of a cultural phenomenon, right, that Hollywood and all the powers that be were dismissive, this will never happen. | ||
| In that moment when you realized It was not that you guys saw something early on and said this could be special, but when it actually became special out in the world, what was that moment like? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's a really, really awesome question because there was multiple moments that led up to it. | |
| But I remember my brother Jeff telling me one of the most important moments was that he's one of the other co-founders. | ||
| So he had had this moment where the first seven months of The Chosen, the first four episodes we launched, Weren't actually doing that well. | ||
| Now, everybody loved them, but it was like pulling teeth to get anybody to watch them. | ||
| And I remember Brother Jump would invite people over to dinner, and then right after dinner, he'd be like, okay, now we're going to watch three episodes of The Chosen. | ||
| And they'd be like, what? And he's like, I've got a captive audience. | ||
| You are sitting here. I poured my life into this. | ||
| You are watching this series. | ||
| You got a different dinner? | ||
| Now you're going to watch this. Seriously. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, seriously, because we couldn't get people to watch it. | |
| But what we kept seeing is people on social media commenting and saying, I would love to watch this, but I don't know who you guys are, and I don't want to pay a subscription. | ||
| I don't want to do X, Y, Z. And then people would reply and say, hey, DM me, and I'll send you the DVDs. | ||
| It's amazing. And so there was this crazy idea. | ||
| What if we can connect the people who want to watch this to the people who want to share it without them ever meeting? | ||
| And so we decided to bet our entire company. | ||
| And to be clear, we literally are betting our entire company on this because During this time, we're in a Disney lawsuit. | ||
| We are in Chapter 11. | ||
| People should know Disney are the absolute killers in Hollywood. | ||
| When they come at you, they are killers. | ||
|
unidentified
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They are killers. | |
| But that being said, we are in a Disney lawsuit, and we had filed, and we had learned, and we were getting throttled in California. | ||
| I mean, in that district, it was not doing us any favors. | ||
| I think that's called an away game. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're not playing home court. | |
| But we had this person who reached out to us and he said, you guys should file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. | ||
| And everybody's like, what? | ||
| And he said, no, no, no, hear me out. | ||
| That's going to allow you to pull jurisdiction out of California and into your home court. | ||
| And so he filed for Chapter 11 and gave us a year of protection. | ||
| During that year, we had a trustee who was running the company. | ||
| He was deciding if Angel Studios are going to liquidate and die, or if we were going to continue. | ||
| And he came to us and he said, I'm going to study this out. | ||
| I'm going to interview all you guys. | ||
| I'm going to interview Disney. I'm going to figure out who the bad actor is and I'm going to shove it down their throat. | ||
| This is an atheist. He's not really thinking about it. | ||
| He just wants to do what's right. | ||
| He was an honorable man. He comes back to our company after doing his investigations, and he says, Disney's the bad actor. | ||
| I'm going to shove it down this road. | ||
| After his due diligence, he came back and said, He says, this is not about what they're saying it's about. | ||
| This is about crushing competition. | ||
| And so he comes to us, and he turns around, and he says, but in order for me to do this, I need you to generate with The Chosen and your other content at least—this is about October—at least $1.5 million from November to December. | ||
| Now, to put that in perspective, we had generated from— He's like, if you don't, I have to liquidate everything because it's not going to work. | ||
| And so he just said, but to put that into perspective, from January to October, we had generated 700 grand on The Chosen. | ||
| So this seems like an impossible feat. | ||
| In 60 days to do what you haven't done in the other 10 months. | ||
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unidentified
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That's right. And we launched... | |
| Out of a miracle, this new free model where we gave our content away free and we let people pay it forward for others to watch it for free and it exploded and we did almost to the dollar over 1.5 million dollars. | ||
| What a story. | ||
| And so the trustee comes and he says to the judge, he says, not only can Angel Studios repay the judgment that the juries gave them, they'll repay it over a 14-year schedule. | ||
| And Disney goes, no, no, no, no, no, we want them to liquidate everything. | ||
| We want to bankrupt them. | ||
| And everybody's like, wait a minute, that doesn't sound like you're actually trying That sounds very predatorial. | ||
| And so that shifted. Like you don't like the competition. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. And so it shifted. | ||
| It shifted drastically. And then COVID hit. | ||
| They started losing $50 million plus a day. | ||
| We were growing like a skyrocket. | ||
| We ended up doing well over $47 million in revenue that year. | ||
| And in September or October... | ||
| Go back. So the next year... | ||
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unidentified
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The next year we did $47 million. | |
| You did $700,000 in the first 10 months, $1.5 million. | ||
| So you did $2.2 million. | ||
| The next year you did $47 million. | ||
| Yes. And walk people through how you do it. | ||
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unidentified
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This is a great business story. Now The Chosen has grown, and all of our projects have grown to well over $300 billion. | |
| And so what ended up happening was you had this beautiful show that took off. | ||
| Drybar saved our company when we were in desperate need, and then The Chosen saved our company when we were in desperate need. | ||
| It hit just right, and now we are grateful. | ||
| That those two projects have built us the network where we can get stories like Sound of Freedom out to the world. | ||
| And in 2020, we ended up settling with Disney because they were draining money and they said, you know what? | ||
| We don't want any lawsuits. | ||
| Let's just get rid of it, be done with it. | ||
| And we ended up settling for a little over $7 million. | ||
| Go back to The Chosen. | ||
| When you first started The Chosen, the production, how did you fund the production cost to even get to the four episodes? | ||
| You must have been looking into the abyss. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. So we ended up doing exactly what we did with our company, where we went to the crowd and we says, do you want this to exist? | |
| And if you do... Just on a script. | ||
| Well, we had that short film. | ||
| Short film, yes. That short film of 30 minutes that Dallas had put together on The Nativity, and we raised over $10 million for season one on a short film. | ||
| And we've actually done crowdfunding for every one of our original projects. | ||
| So like, for example, Sound of Freedom... | ||
| It had already been done, but we decided to take the same crowdfunding principles that allow us to build a community and get that grassroots effort going. | ||
| We opened what was called a P&A crowdfund, where the crowd could come in and they could invest in the actual P&A so they could get a return. | ||
| P&A supports the- Prints and advertising. | ||
| That's an industry term really for the marketing dollars. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's exactly right. And they raised $5 million in less than 14 days for Sound of Freedom. | |
| Incredible. We're going to take a short commercial break here. | ||
| We're going to return. We've got Jordan Harmon. | ||
| He's on a tight schedule. | ||
| They premiered the film last night in D.C., and I will tell you, it moved people. | ||
| Is that the magnificent... | ||
| Bible Museum's theater, which is breathtaking. | ||
| You're going to play in bigger theaters here in D.C. We can't announce that yet. | ||
| They'll be in a couple of weeks. But I will say that this film took the town by storm. | ||
| And people were very moved by it. | ||
| It's got real momentum. Tremendous meetings the team had today up on Capitol Hill. | ||
| We're going to take a short break. | ||
| We'll be back to fit Jordan's schedule. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment with Jordan Harmon, one of the co-founders of the I hope you're inspired. | ||
| Get a ticket. Send a message to Hollywood. | ||
|
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Be back in a moment. All I've ever known To always keep you close Holding on to hold War Room Battleground with Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| Jordan Harmon is with me, one of the co-founders of Angel Studios. | ||
| Given that incredible story, two things. | ||
| Number one, when you saw this film, I want to know your first impressions, because when I saw the clips they had or the segments they had almost three years ago, I said, the filmmaking here is extraordinary, but the topic is a tough topic. | ||
| And I didn't tell them, hey, Hollywood's not going to be, because at that time I think they were still at Fox. | ||
| And I said, how did they prove the script? | ||
| The first time you and your brother saw it, give me your impressions of what went through your mind the first time. | ||
|
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So the first time I watched this, I watched it on a laptop with my wife, and We had to pause a few moments during that film because the... | |
| When you have children yourself, it is very difficult to... | ||
| There's a line in the film where he says, what if this is your daughter? | ||
| And I remember pausing and just, you know... | ||
| Tears and emotions going through. | ||
| And so I immediately knew that if God wanted us to, that we wanted to get this out. | ||
| Now, obviously, it had to get through the Angel Guild. | ||
| But the Angel Guild, those 100,000 investors of The Chosen and all of our other TV shows, they gave it one of the top scores we've ever seen. | ||
| Tell me about that. So you put it out to the Guild, and the Guild are just like studio heads. | ||
| They all watch it. And then tell me what their response is. | ||
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Yeah, so anybody who's an investor in any of our projects or a subscriber to the Guild, you can download the Angel app and inside there's a Guild tab. | |
| And it allows people to come see the projects that are in Angel's pipeline. | ||
| And it could be concept pieces, it could be finished films, it could be pilot episodes. | ||
| And those people are asked two questions. | ||
| Does the story amplify light? | ||
| And again, we define that as whatever is lovely, true, honest, noble, excellent, those principles. | ||
| And then the second question we ask is actually called the Sean Ellis test. | ||
| So Sean Ellis, if anybody's aware of the software Slack, is this business software where people use to communicate with people inside their company. | ||
| Well, in the early days of Slack, investors are experiencing some major fatigue as to, like, I don't know what the business model is here. | ||
| And so Sean says, hey, you know what? | ||
| Let me go survey the customer base and see what we have here. | ||
| And he asks them a very unique question. | ||
| He says, if Slack didn't exist tomorrow, how would you feel? | ||
| And he only gave them three options. | ||
| Very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or not disappointed. | ||
| He didn't actually care about when people said somewhat disappointed or not disappointed because those aren't passionate people. | ||
| He wanted to know how many people would be very disappointed if Slack didn't exist tomorrow. | ||
| And 54 % of people came back and said, we'd be very disappointed. | ||
| So he goes to the investors and he says, we've got to double down on this. | ||
| We've got something special here. | ||
| Well, lo and behold, a decade later, Slack sells for $27 billion. | ||
| And so we use that similar question where we say, if this was never made into an Angel Studios original or an Angel Studios production or a film, How would you feel? | ||
| Very disappointed? Somewhat disappointed or not disappointed? | ||
| You have to get well over 40 % of people to say they'd be very disappointed just to be considered. | ||
| And then if you want to go theaters... | ||
| Hold on, hold on. Walk me through that again. | ||
| You have a cutoff. | ||
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It has to be 40 %? 40 % of people have to say they'd be very disappointed. | |
| It means 40 % of this massive group has to be very disappointed if this doesn't exist. | ||
| And that's just to be considered. You want the guild to be... | ||
| Passionate about. Just even to get it into the process. | ||
| That's right. You're so time-consuming. | ||
| That's exactly right. People are saying the film business just as a time suck. | ||
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100%. And that's just to be considered. | |
| Now, to go to theaters, it's 60%. | ||
| Wow. You're saying you've got to raise it up. | ||
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Yeah, because the effort has been streaming. | |
| And the Sound of Freedom got well over 70 % of people saying we'd be very disappointed if this didn't exist. | ||
| Of the Guild. Of the Guild. | ||
| And I want to see it in theaters. | ||
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That's right. And so there's this massive built-up demand where we already wanted to do this. | |
| We saw the film, we could feel it, and we could sense that there was something incredibly special here. | ||
| Eduardo and Alejandro and their team, they are brilliant. | ||
| Jim's acting as this is the best of his career. | ||
| Best. And so... | ||
| When the Guild came in and said that, we said, we're going to dedicate every resource we have to get this out there. | ||
| And then it was about just picking a date. | ||
| And so we decided to do the double tip. | ||
| Go to Angel.com right now. | ||
| Support this film. Slash War Room. | ||
| Get your tickets. Here's why. | ||
| This film is, in and of itself, as a thing itself, is very important. | ||
| It's going to relieve a movement. But also what Angel is doing is also a movement in themselves. | ||
| And I want to go to the next, I don't want to call it a kamikaze mission. | ||
| But normally, when studios have a slate of pictures, and people say, well, why do studios traditionally put out 12 to 18 pictures? | ||
| One of the reasons is that the exhibitors have got to pay them, right, because they've got another picture they're going to deliver. | ||
| So the whole system is very locked in from the 1920s when motion pictures really started. | ||
| And that's what you've seen. | ||
| There really haven't been many new studios. | ||
| Not a lot of innovation there. And not a lot of new studios since then. | ||
| People have tried it, but over time it gets to be very tough. | ||
| You guys are trying something radically different. | ||
| Normally, I could go to any other studio and they would talk to me about a year out, particularly their summer, which the theater owners is the highest time of year we're going to sell the most popcorn, even more than Christmas or Easter. | ||
| 100%. We're going to sell the most popcorn and have people come from multiple times and be bigger crowds. | ||
| The studios are looking nine months out. | ||
| You've done this in... | ||
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Less than three months. | |
| Less than three months. That, I would say, knowing the business and being in the business for 20 years... | ||
| That is impossible. How did you convince the theater? | ||
| Because the exhibitors, the studio is different than the exhibitors. | ||
| The exhibitors already booked their things out. | ||
| Yeah. And you're not just... | ||
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Mission Impossible has been on that date for a year. | |
| A year. And so is the Raiders, the... | ||
| Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones. | ||
| The last week of September, maybe, when kids got to go back to school, or it's August. | ||
| Not the 4th of July weekend. | ||
| So how did you make a decision, get all the mechanics you need to release the film theatrically, and then go in and convince the theater owners that, oh, by the way, in your busiest time of the year, most profitable, can I have, like, 3,000 screens? | ||
|
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So, first of all, a lot of faith. | |
| Because there were some inspirational moments within the company from multiple people who felt like Sound of Freedom needed to be a July 4th release. | ||
| And so we had to go... | ||
| Now, we had to back it up with logic and say, how do we pull this off? | ||
| Because faith can only get you so far, right? | ||
| Sound of Freedom, because you're saying this is a film about freedom. | ||
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We had to inventize that. | |
| It's about freedom. | ||
| It's about freedom for these children. | ||
| And so... Once we decided on the date, one of the big reasons that we actually went with that is, so there's a story back in, and I'm trying to remember the studio's name. | ||
| It's Feature Films for Families, I believe. | ||
| So they were getting their start. | ||
| I believe it was them. And they were having some successes, and then they kind of bet their entire company on a single film called The Swan Princess. | ||
| Mm-hmm. And they announced that they're going to the theaters with the Swan Princess. | ||
| They're trying to go head-to-head with Disney. | ||
| I haven't heard of it, so I think that's a bad news for the studio. | ||
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It is bad news for the studio. | |
| And what ended up happening was Disney had Lion King, I believe, on a different slate before the Swan Princess, and then they went and extended it. | ||
| To take all the screens so that... | ||
| End of Swan Princess. End of Swan Princess in that studio and they end up going bankrupt on that film. | ||
| People should understand because the theater owners said, I get dizzy with Lion King. | ||
| I don't think I'm taking Swan Princess. | ||
| That's exactly right. They're going to be in like the tiny screen. | ||
| That's exactly right. Of the 20 multiplies. | ||
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Or almost no screens. And so for us, we are a nimble startup company. | |
| And we had this feeling that if we can move very quickly... | ||
| And swiftly that the opposition won't have time to adapt. | ||
| And so we picked a date that no one had. | ||
| And we had, you know, Sound of Freedom is a little bit of counter-programming that it's not exactly like Mission Impossible. | ||
| It's not exactly like Indiana Jones. | ||
| One of your point is a lot of other of your competitors in the independent film biz or whatever are not going to go up against. | ||
| That's right. So you're not going to see a lot of new releases. | ||
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100%. And so we went in there and we basically went into the theaters and we said, listen... | |
| Here's why, and based off of our success with His Only Son and the Easter release, because they were thrilled to death with that. | ||
| It got number three in the box office with, like, John Wick and, you know, Mario Brothers. | ||
| It was lined up against a ton of blockbusters, and it did really, really well. | ||
| We had built enough relationship with them, and they're rooting for us. | ||
| They really are. | ||
| The exhibitors. The theaters. | ||
| Because they want another good product. | ||
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They want another great for family-oriented content. | |
| And so they're rooting for us, and they turned around, and they said, you know what? | ||
| We want to give you a chance to do this. | ||
| And our model is that we need people to show up to pre-sales to earn our way to more and more screens, to earn our way to more and more theaters. | ||
| That's why we got two main tickets. Two main relates to the kids that have been... | ||
| Trafficked every year. Trafficked every year. | ||
| So go to angel.com right now slash war room to get your tickets and to buy a grunch of them to take family and friends. | ||
| When the theater owners, the exhibitors, who are fairly steely-eyed guys, right? | ||
| It's a tough business. | ||
| When you show them the film... | ||
| What was their response? | ||
| Because these guys, and they may have a feeling this is something that people see, but they really are, they're hardcore. | ||
| Are people going to come see this movie? | ||
|
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Yep, 100%. And we were blown away when we looked at Cinemark and Regal and AMC and all these major theaters and showed it to them, that every one of them was like, you have our support. | |
| It's great. And so we need to give them the courage to give us more and more theater screens and to give the smaller players, the regionals and the local theaters to give us screens. | ||
| And so, you know, like you said, if you're at angel.com slash war room, that is the critical... | ||
| The call to action is that in the next 14 days, we've got to make a stronger statement than ever. | ||
| Because you're going to impress the theater owners, so it's going to be easier to get a family-oriented product of light in next time. | ||
| You're going to put all the agencies and the marketing companies and everybody that deals with the actors are all going to say, hey, these guys are players. | ||
| These guys can get a tough picture out within 90 days. | ||
| I've never heard of it. | ||
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Yeah, I've heard of it, especially not for a summer release. | |
| In the late 80s at Goldman and in my own firm, you know, we're one of the financiers in this business. | ||
| I've never heard of a company taking a project on 90 days later having on 2,500 screens. | ||
| I mean, it just shows you the determination. | ||
| You guys won't take no for an answer. | ||
|
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Well, you know, we were meeting with someone in the Capitol today and he said a really powerful statement. | |
| He said, the key to success is persistence. | ||
| It's not about being exceptionally smarter. | ||
| It's not about being, you know, the sharpest tool in the box. | ||
| It's about being persistent and never giving up. | ||
| And so for us, we looked at it and we just said, you know what? | ||
| We know the marketing space really, really well. | ||
| You know, part of our background, like I said, is in marketing. | ||
| If you've ever seen like the Harmon Brothers Agency, if you've ever seen like the Poopery ads or the Squatty Potty ads or the Purple Mattress that have hundreds of millions of views, really billions of views now. | ||
| That's where our background came from, that agency to really propel what we do. | ||
| And so we're leveraging this type of marketing, kind of guerrilla marketing, into the theater space in a massive way. | ||
| Tell me about last night the premiere in, first of all, the Bible Museum, perfect place to They are wonderful. | ||
|
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We love those guys. It's a magnificent facility. | |
| The crowd was incredible. | ||
| Because during the week here, particularly people were back voting late at night. | ||
| They're arguing about these impeachment bills, all this. | ||
| An incredible crowd. | ||
| But then you were at Capitol Hill today and all the furor that's going on. | ||
| But people are making time because they've heard about the movie. | ||
| They're going to see the movie. | ||
| Some have seen snippets of it. | ||
| But these guys are smart about knowing when something's hot. | ||
| So tell me about Capitol Hill today. | ||
|
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Yeah, so I think the coolest part about Capitol Hill today is these guys, they're so busy. | |
| You know, you're busy, we're all busy. | ||
| Like, the fact that you've taken so much time to help us with this film is just remarkable. | ||
| And so we're all busy, but, you know, everybody has, you know, their chief of staff or their assistants that are supposed to come in and let them know, hey, it's time to come out. | ||
| And time and time and time again today at the Capitol Hill, we'd be meeting with someone and someone would be like, hey, we've got to come out for a vote. | ||
| And they're like, give me a minute. You know, they wanted to hear and understand. | ||
| And we showed them, obviously, the new trailer that you showed to your audience today that you released. | ||
| And so this truly is resonating across the board. | ||
| And it should. We should all be united on our children. | ||
| And how much they mean? | ||
| Because we always say the children are the future, right? | ||
| Well, we've got to unite around this because if we can't unite around this, I don't know what we can unite around. | ||
| Well, the shocking thing about the... | ||
| First off, I think people... | ||
| And I don't want to give too much of the film away because, like I said, it's made as a Hollywood thriller, right? | ||
| And the things are revealed as you go on. | ||
| And I think that's one of the reasons the theater owners said, hey, this movie's as good as anything Liam Neeson's been making or better, much better. | ||
| Um... It's the shocking fact, number one, that Tim is actually a government agent that's kind of pulled off the case. | ||
| And then you're sitting there going, whoa, whoa, whoa. | ||
| The second is that, and what still gets me, is that the United States is the driver of demand here. | ||
| That this is a- Number one consumer. | ||
| Number one consumer of this. | ||
| And that is shocking. | ||
| And I think if we can unite around that- And Ed Water was here today to talk about how we work together with Mexico to shut down the supply side. | ||
| But to shut down the supply side, you've got to get to the demand side. | ||
| 100%. So tell me, when you say you want this to be part of the release of this film, to get the muzzle velocity out there, to start a movement. | ||
|
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What does that mean to you? So the beauty of storytelling is that, I can't remember who said it, but they said if I want to influence a society and I have to choose between politics and art, I'm going to choose art. It was Plato. | |
| It was Plato. Okay, yes, thank you. | ||
| I'm glad you remembered. You're in the war room, baby. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. Although Ed Warner dropped that on me today, so he's good, too. | ||
| Based on all these books in here, you've got some reading that you've done. | ||
| But the point is that... | ||
| But it's important. I'm going to choose art or politics to control society. | ||
|
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I'm going to choose art. And so when we look at where society is and really the illness that's in certain parts of society, there are a massive amount of the unheard... | |
| And the neglected part of the United States and the world. | ||
| And we need to fill that gap with meaningful stories that are going to amplify light into the darkest places of the world. | ||
| And so with Sound of Freedom, it's a movie that causes you, when you get done, to say, what can I do? | ||
| How can I help? | ||
| And what I would encourage people to do is... | ||
| Every one of you, it's probably going to be individual and unique, right? | ||
| It might be something as simple as just sharing word of mouth or paying it forward so someone else can watch the movie for free. | ||
| Or, you know, maybe you have more resources to help an organization that's tackling these problems. | ||
| And so as the awareness lifts... | ||
| Or talk about it at the barbecue the next night. | ||
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That's exactly right. If it moves you... | |
| First off, one of the first reactions you're going to have... | ||
| Is it going to sit there and go, how did I not know what this was going on? | ||
| How am I not aware of this on a problem that is a, Jim said today, globally, I think it's $155 billion. | ||
| It's $35 billion in the United States. | ||
| How is this thing so big? | ||
| And you have these agents on these complex assignments, and it's clearly some sort of industrial structure on the supply side. | ||
| How could this go on and not know anything about it? | ||
|
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Yeah, and that's where I think this film comes in and fills that void. | |
| Worldwide, I think this film has the potential to truly bring that awareness. | ||
| And there's this saying that says, all ships rise with the rising tide. | ||
| As sound of freedom rises and the awareness lifts, The globe is going to hear that, and they're going to help the organizations, and they're going to rise with it in terms of resources and abilities. | ||
| And so that's our goal. | ||
| Our goal is to bring awareness, to mold the culture, and to help us wake up to this atrocity. | ||
| Okay, time for action. | ||
| Use your agency. Do you have people that will take action and do things, the guys at Angel? | ||
| I've just done an incredible job. | ||
| So make sure you go to Angel.com right now slash War Room. | ||
| Get your tickets. Take people with you. | ||
| Become a force multiplier because that's the only way this thing's going to get there. | ||
| Real quickly, how do people get, if they want to become part of your other aspects, where do they go? | ||
| How do they see future product? | ||
|
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How do they see all of that? Yeah, so you can either go to Angel.com or you can download the Angel app on any of your major devices. | |
| And inside the Angel mobile app, you can actually sign up and subscribe to the Angel Guild to help influence what are the stories that will be told into the future inside of Angel's ecosystem. | ||
| That is such a powerful way for your voice and your values to be heard. | ||
| Because, again, no matter how much I as a founder and my brothers and as executives that we want something to come through into our ecosystem, the Angel Guild has to give us the thumbs up first. | ||
| And so that's a critical thing you can do. | ||
| Again, Angel.com, also download the Angel app. | ||
| And we are so grateful for, obviously, Steve and the voice that he's giving to the voiceless. | ||
| Wow. And we're grateful for your audience and that they are showing up in droves to buy tickets and to help support this incredible film. | ||
| When Caviezel and Eduardo got back to me and said, hey, the film's going to come out theatrically in the summer on over 2,000 screens, I go, come on, guys. | ||
| They go, no, we're working with the Angel guys. | ||
| I said, the guys did The Chosen. | ||
| I go, I'm in. I'm all in. | ||
| They're amazing. You guys are fantastic. | ||
| Thank you, Steve. Tell the other five brothers. | ||
| I can't wait to meet the sisters. | ||
| They're the killers, right? They are. | ||
| They are incredible. Okay, angel.com slash war room. | ||
| We're going to end with the trailer, and then I will be back here live 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. | ||
| A lot going on. See you then. | ||
|
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That was awesome. How did that make you feel? | |
| Giving a child is freedom. | ||
| So good. | ||
| You have been at this for 12 years. | ||
| Why are you doing it? | ||
| Slaves and their liberty. | ||
| Because God's children are not for sale. | ||
| It is the fastest growing international crime network that the world has ever seen. | ||
| For Homeland Security, you know we can't go off rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia. | ||
| This job tears you to pieces. | ||
| And this is my one chance to put those pieces back together. | ||
| And yet, somehow, you have failed to bring me one real world lead. | ||
| It's over, Tim. Close up, and come back home. | ||
| So, you quit your job, and you go and rescue those kids? | ||
| Let freedom ring! | ||
| Let freedom ring! | ||
| South of that room is all rebel territory. | ||
|
unidentified
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No one goes in. | |
| Don't shoot! | ||
| What if this was your daughter? | ||
| So, she's gone. | ||
| Hear that? | ||
| you That's the Sound of Freedom. | ||
| Sound of Freedom is one of those films that can legitimately change this world. | ||
| So we want to ignite a fire in audiences and open their eyes to the dark reality of millions of children that need our help. | ||
| Let's make this film a historic event and a start at the end of child trafficking. | ||
| Theatres across this country are already selling out. |
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