Angel Studios Showed Their Hand At CinemaCon
Most people are probably unfamiliar with Angel Studios considering they are fairly new to the film distribution game. To date their most famous outing has been Sound of Freedom, a movie starring Jim Caviezel that grossed $250 million on a $14.5 million budget. Outside of that film, very few of their others have turned a profit including this year's Cabrini that is sitting at $19 million at the box office on a $50 million budget.
Because of the success last year (again on one film) Angel Studios made an appearance at CinemaCon to show off their new upcoming release slate. Since they are a fairly conservative leaning studio that produces a ton of faith-based content, the majority of their release slate is not surprising. One is a biopic about a pastor in Germany during World War II who was executed for following his faith instead of the Nazis while one is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in a compound for doomsday preppers who need to unite to survive.
Then there's David, their first theatrical outing in animation. This movie was introduced to exhibitors who showed up to this presentation as an animated family musical about the life of the biblical figure David. The budget on this film is substantial as well, with a fundraising goal of $61 million. On top of this, the executives giving the presentation predicted that this would be the highest grossing animated film of all time. For a frame of reference, this would put the predicted box office at around $1.7 billion. David is slated for release on November 21st, 2025.
It is this film's subject matter, release date, and Angel Studios' past behavior has tipped their hand for next year a little bit. This movie will be opening the week before Zootopia 2 and what more of a Goliath is there in the children's film market than Disney? The goal is clear, to release this movie and have its second week beat Zootopia 2 in its second so they can declare this a major victory for them. I believe the victory lap will start even if they lose in Zootopia's first week but their first week is stronger. Even if people do not come out to see the film, they can always use their "Pay it Forward" program to sell out theaters and inflate their box office numbers like they did with Sound of Freedom.
Taking a look at Disney's recent performance of their November releases in their opening weekend, that's not a super high bar to clear. Looking at the last few years, here are the numbers:
- 2021: Raya and the Last Dragon-$8.5 Million (Simultaneous Disney+)
- 2021: Encanto-$27.2 Million
- 2022: Strange World-$12.1 Million
- 2023: Wish-$19.6 Million
That said, Zootopia grossed over a billion dollars and Disney's theatrical sequels like Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2 have been massive successes. The biggest unknown for Angel will be whether they can turn David into an inflection point movie, something that could probably happen with ease considering the state of culture wars. It's also worth noting that it is very nearly at its funding goal which blows previous goals for their animated projects out of the water. Something fishy is going on here but we likely will not know more until next November when this film comes out.
