SCOOP: Investors Are Asking About Supporting a Charlie Kirk Film

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Investors have approached Angel, seeking to front cash for a feature film about the life of Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk after his assassination in Utah last week.

“I’ve had multiple people call me already who have offered to fund Charlie Kirk’s story and to release Charlie Kirk’s story on Angel so that it can reflect the best of our society,” Neal Harmon, CEO of Angel, told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday.

Angel, the crowd-funded streaming service and film studio responsible for the popular series “The Chosen,” aims to create and distribute stories that amplify light. The company, based in Provo, Utah, grew as a response to the increasing trend toward sexually explicit and nihilistic content in Hollywood.

The Angel Guild, a group of 1.5 million members, reviews and votes on episodes and movies to help Angel decide whether to take on a project. In addition to “The Chosen” (a series about Jesus’ disciples), Angel has distributed films such as the box office phenomenon “Sound of Freedom” (a movie about sex trafficking featuring Jim Caviezel, best known for playing Jesus in the 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ”) and last year’s animated hit “The King of Kings.”

Investors have approached Angel, expressing interest in a project on Kirk. But following the Angel model, it would be up to the Angel Guild to approve any film for production or distribution.

Kirk’s Support for Angel

“Charlie was a huge supporter of Angel,” Harmon said. “He brought in tens of thousands of Angel Guild members, and he has two young children, and he cared about what we were doing.”

“I definitely think that if Charlie were here today … he’d say we’ve got to win, Angel needs to win as an idea,” the CEO added. “This idea that the audience gets to decide, this idea that we’re going to focus on stories that are true, honest, noble. Where’s the modern version of ‘Twelve Angry Men’ (1957), the modern version of ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’ (1960), or ‘Sound of Music’ (1965)? That’s the kind of stories that are going to surface through the Angel platform.”

The Angel CEO said he was “without words” over Kirk’s passing.

“Every time that I would see him communicate, he would communicate respectfully,” even when he “vehemently disagreed” with someone, Harmon recalled. “That is what we need more of.”

Eerie Echoes

Kirk’s assassination happened on the day Angel had been set to release “RFK Legacy,” a film co-directed by Sean Stone and produced by his father, Oliver Stone, which focuses on the legacy of Robert F. Kennedy Sr. through interviews with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Like Kirk, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. died in a political assassination.

The day after Kirk’s death, Angel went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

“If there were ever a time that we need values-driven entertainment that unites us as a people, it’s now,” Harmon said. “And that’s Angel’s purpose, to find the kind of storytelling that will reflect the best in our decisions.”

Movies About Opposing Hitler

Harmon addressed the cultural divisions in America, where too many people often compare their political opponents to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Angel released “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin,” last year, telling the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor who got executed for opposing the Nazis.

“We had lots of people who were saying you needed to release that movie before the election,” the CEO recalled. “We had both sides of the aisle feeling like that movie was calling the other side Hitler.”

Next month, Angel will release “Truth & Treason,” a movie about 17-year-old Helmuth Hübener, who wrote anti-Nazi pamphlets and got executed for speaking out against the evil regime.

“Whoever we want to throw the Nazi label on, people will do that for their political aim—but where society will be the safest is when people like Helmut have the courage to call a spade a spade, to see truth for what it is, and speak up about it,” Harmon said.

He said Kirk, in courageously speaking his mind, “was in the service of the public when he gave his life,” just like Hübener. “That’s the kind of courage that I aspire to and that I would love for my children and for other young people in this country to aspire to.”

The CEO reiterated his faith that Charlie Kirk would tell him to make Angel better.

“It feels self-serving for me to say this, but I know if Charlie were sitting here today, he’d just say, ‘Yeah, you need to work harder,'” Harmon said. “‘You need to figure out this better. You need to fight so that my girls have a better future and better storytelling.'”

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