I'm Warren Smith, and today you'll be listening in on two conversations I had recently

with men who are shaking up the Christian entertainment market.

First up is Neil Harmon, the co-founder of Vid Angel and Angel Studios.

Later in the program, we'll hear from Chris Wall,

who is the showrunner for what of Angel Studios' most anticipated projects, the animated adaptation of Andrew Peterson's Wing Feather Saga. We are a fantasy series told by Christians,

and I think it's really been important.

So as we found our way forward, over the last six years, it's been very difficult and frankly lonely

because we see a lot of this in the Christian marketplace a certain way that that can get done

that we're not a part of, and we don't frankly want to be.

And then in the second marketplace, the same thing.

That was Chris Wall, who we will hear from later in the program. But we begin today with Neil

Harmon. Neal Harmon was raised in a Mormon family in a town in Idaho that he says is straight

out of the movie Napoleon Dynamite. He grew up on a farm, learning the

value of hard work, though initially at least he didn't see much value in school. His relationship

with books took off, though, when his mother gave him a copy of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the

wardrobe. From that moment on, storytelling has been a big part of his life. The company he founded

Vid Angel started out by providing edited versions of mainstream movies, edited to take out the sex, violence, and profanity.

The company now has a production arm, Angel Studios, and they've pioneered the use of crowdsourcing,

the funding of such projects as The Chosen, and one of the projects that we'll discuss later in the program today, Andrew Peterson's Wingfeather Saga.

I had this conversation with Neil Harmon at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters held in Nashville earlier this year.

Neil, welcome to the program.

It's great to have you on.

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