No film from Angel Studios makes it to the big screen without the approval of the Angel Guild.

Over 21 films a week are submitted to the Angel Guild, “and then the guild goes through those and they’re picking their favorites and they’re greenlighting them and then Angel Studios can only pick from the list that they greenlight,” explains Jeff Harmon, chief content officer for Angel Studios. //

Neal Harmon: Once we started thinking about the media and storytelling, from perspective of our own children, we said, “We’re not happy with where the world’s headed and how are we going to solve this problem or has someone solved this problem?” When we realized no one had and that there were other parents that were interested in solving this problem, we decided to do something about it. //

Neal Harmon: The core premise of Hollywood is two things, from our perspective.

One is that if you collect a group of people and have them work together in storytelling, that you’ll create a vibrant community that can tell stories better than anyone else in the world. We think that Hollywood actually is performing well on that premise, like that they tell a story better than anyone else in the world.

The second thing is that Hollywood has consolidated the decisions of what stories to tell into very few hands.

Jeff Harmon: Gatekeeper model.

Neal Harmon: Gatekeeper model, yeah. And that’s what’s different, is Angel’s fine with the craft of Hollywood and the capability, but then the gatekeeper and the decision-making we feel like has lost its way, it’s trapped in a bubble. And we’ve flipped the power structure so that the Angel community, the Angel Guild makes the decisions, rather than a few elite decision-makers.

Jeff Harmon: We don’t make the decisions. We can’t pick a film unless it goes through the Angel Guild first and the Angel Guild is over 100,000 people—

Neal Harmon: And growing. //

You can join it by investing or you can join it by subscribing, so anybody who goes to angel.com/guild can join the guild.

They get a vote on the content that goes to theaters. They get two free movie tickets to every single movie that comes out. //

Neal Harmon: And why are we doing it this way instead of the way Netflix does it? We have learned that the community aspect of watching films creates an experience that shapes culture. It becomes part of the culture.

There’s lots of things that have come to Netflix that nobody hears about. They hear about it if they’re on Netflix, but they don’t become part of the cultural conversation the way that “Sound of Freedom” did. “Sound of Freedom” is arguably the most talked about story in this decade. And that’s what the Angel Guild wants. That’s what we all want, is we want to shape cultures.