In the lead-up to its release, Andy Serkis’s Animal Farm movie was lambasted for being unfaithful to the underlying source material written by George Orwell, most notably by Tim Pool. Many Conservative Inc podcasters promoted the movie on behalf of Angel Studios, but this was mainly after the bad press had already circulated.
On a movie with an estimated budget of $35 million, Animal Farm proceeded to be yet another box office bomb for Angel Studios, raking in only $5.6 million globally as of May 18th. The initial weekend managed to gross $3.3 million, which was a poor start as Angel Studios often inflates their box office revenue through tickets for guild members. After three weeks into its run, Animal Farm has already dropped out of the top ten in the domestic box office.
Analysis
The movie represents another failed project for the “conservative” studio that markets itself as family-friendly and customer-centric. Failing to recoup a third of the movie’s budget at the box office means that Angel Studios has a massive strategy failure.
First, their democratized model does not work. As previously discussed, Angel separates the art from the artist, meaning that the guild members are voting on projects while ignorant of the people, and intentions, behind the project. While many conservatives might enjoy a faithful adaptation to Animal Farm, they would be hesitant to back a project if they knew Seth Rogen was involved. Nevertheless, the democratized model failed to sell tickets. Assuming an average of $12/ticket, this movie was seen by roughly half a million Americans while Angel boasts over two million guild members. They cannot even sell or give away tickets to their own customer base.
Second, the podcaster live-read marketing does not work. Glenn Beck, having Blaze contributors, could not sell this movie, while Tim Pool’s rejection of their marketing campaign overshadowed the money spent. All the money spent pumping tweets and pushing live-reads and fewer than a million people turned out. Had Angel been able to prove that they could use influencers to save on marketing costs, this would be an effective strategy, but the ROI is not there.
Third, Angel Studios is in trouble. Their stock continues to trade under $3/share, briefly surpassing as the market reached all-time highs before pulling back. This movie is a flop, and their next release is Young Washington, which is supposed to be their America 250 release. Apart from the namesake of George Washington and the timing, this movie has nothing else going for it, not even a box office draw for a star.
Angel Studios recently added more movies to their distribution schedule: Runner, starring Owen Wilson and Alan Ritchson (Reacher); Angel and the Badman, a western staring Tomy Lee Jones; and Hershey, a biopic about Milton Hershey. So while they have added some more interesting projects to their upcoming releases for 2026, they really have not demonstrated their ability to hit a home run at the box office. How many of these movies does it take to make up for a flop like Animal Farm?
While Animal Farm had a lot of baggage going into its release, that was a film based on a famous book; how much more difficult will it be to sell movies with zero audience familiarity built in?
